


After Tedd Deireádh

by EskelChopChop



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Apocalypse, F/M, Grief/Mourning, HopePunk, Strangers to Lovers, Suicide, White Frost, but still life-affirming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-19 09:44:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22375810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EskelChopChop/pseuds/EskelChopChop
Summary: (Post-Witcher 3-- the bad ending, but even worse)Ciri has failed, Geralt is dead, and the White Frost has come. While living through the earth’s final days, Yennefer discovers that someone else has survived: the witcher Eskel. To their mutual surprise, they find out that the end of the world may not mean the end.Complete, and somehow not the bleak story I thought I was writing!
Relationships: Eskel/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion/Priscilla, Lambert/Keira Metz (mention)
Comments: 99
Kudos: 113





	1. When Winter Comes

Eskel is chopping firewood when she calls. He’s going at it rather vigorously, which is why it takes her not three, not four, but five attempts to get his attention. The fifth time, she must raise her voice to an unseemly volume. Yennefer is not fond of raising her voice.

She sees him look around in bewilderment. Then, slowly, he transfers the hatchet to his left hand and reaches over his shoulder for his sword. The silver sword.

“Eskel. At least reach for your steel blade, or I shall feel quite insulted.”

The witcher finally turns. She always softens the scar in her memory—the mutilated skin of his face dominates her view in the megascope. “Yennefer?” Eskel’s viper eyes widen. “Is that you?”

“None other. Greetings, Eskel. How is the view on that side of my megascope?”

He looks confused—before his eyebrows lift in memory and his cheeks flush red. “Oh. Uh… yeah, about that night, I just wanna say—” 

“Spare me, please. I’ve spent far more of my attention on your antics than I’d like. Let us deposit them where they belong—in the past. The present and the future concern me, at the moment. How are you, Eskel? Are you doing well?”

He lifts his hands, palms up, in a wry gesture that looks familiar. When she remembers why, the wound in her heart cracks open and she can’t breathe. Yennefer has to blink to see past the sudden tears, has to stagger to keep from crumpling. She has heard Geralt refer to Eskel many times as his brother. Now she can see the resemblance, the same casual self-possession and the same careless gestures that belie the witcher’s strength.

“Aside from hearing strange voices in the middle of the woods—hey. Yen, you alright?”

Yennefer wipes a gloved hand across her cheek. “No, Eskel, I’m not alright. But… thank you for asking.”

The same careful stillness in his features, even as his pupils constrict. “Something’s happened.”

“Something has.” She clasps her hands together, tightly. “Eskel… Geralt is dead.”

Eskel has turned to stone. It takes many long moments for him to move, and then only to say one word. “How?”

“Killing the last Crone of Crookback Bog. It seems she had stolen Vesemir’s medallion from…” Yennefer takes a steadying breath. “From Ciri. He succeeded in killing the Crone but never left the swamp.”

The stone that was Eskel has glass eyes. They stare at something to the left of the megascope. “Ciri?”

Yennefer tries to answer him. She fails for too long. The glass eyes flick toward her and she is holding her hand over her mouth. The air feels unbreathable. 

“I’m sorry, Yennefer.” He lowers his head and he is Eskel again—gentle, careful Eskel, silent with a hole in his heart. “Thank you for telling me.”

They stand, together and thousands of miles apart, in the shimmering silver of the megascope. 

“I should go.”

“Wait,” she chokes.

Eskel lifts his gaze and she knows that he wants to be alone now. She can see every bottle that Geralt’s brother will drink tonight. It will be White Gull, or if his spirits blacken enough, Black Seagull. He will spend hours in the dark hallucinating a world where his brother is not dead, and when the callous morning comes, he will begin again.

“I wanted to tell you… the White Frost is coming.”

He is beyond comprehending, beyond caring. “White…”

“Ithlinne's Prophecy. Tedd Deireádh, the Wolf’s Blizzard. Ciri tried to stop it. She failed. If you can find shelter, do so. The Time of the End has come.”

Eskel stares. His eyes turn as hard as his blades.

“Let it.”

And he goes.

\- - -

It begins in Undvik. 

Oceans harden to ice. Birds, frozen mid-flight, shatter into splinters on the earth below. The harpies flee to their nests and die curled around their eggs. 

Snow falls over the armies of Aen Elle, Nilfgaard, and Skellige, over destroyed villages and ancient elven ruins, over the beached carcass of an enormous white whale. It falls until there is nothing left to bury but snow.

\- - -

“I tell you, we have tried these strategies already! All of them. The best we could do was delay the Frost!” 

“Dear sir, remind me why your word should hold any weight with us at all. It was you that led Cirilla to that tower, you who filled her with these fairy tales of defeating the White Frost! You who sent her to her death!”

“It was Zirael’s choice. She felt that she must try.”

“She could have trained longer! Built her strength! Learned to control her power! You sent a young girl to battle with a cosmic force, alone. And now our only hope has perished.”

“Philippa, must you…?”

“Along with our world.”

“Now, now, sisters. Must we give in to gloom so quickly? Let us learn all we may before we fall to the floor, swooning and sighing. Avallac'h, you say that the Aen Elle have attempted these spells already, with minimal success?”

“Correct. At best, our mages could buy time. But you have far fewer mages than we had at our disposal, and the Frost is moving quickly.”

“Is it true that Cerys has become a ruler in exile? That all of Ard Skellige has evacuated to the mainland as refugees?”

“Perhaps at first, Rita. But the free city of Novigrad launched its fleet against the coming Skelligan ships when they did not turn back.”

“Hm. The city is already bursting with refugees from the war.”

“Indeed.”

“How fast is the Frost moving? Can we outrun it?”

“No. When I have traveled to worlds engulfed by the Frost, nothing is left untouched. Assume that there is no safe place left on this earth.”

“In which case, we find another. Yes? You’ve traveled between worlds, Sage. There are worlds beyond this one, where we can find shelter.”

“Marvelous idea. Shall we shape you a spiked crown and address you as Imlerith? Have we got enough fingernails to build our own ship of the dead?”

“Please limit your role-play to consenting partners, Yennefer.”

“My point being, this is exactly the strategy adopted by the Wild Hunt. The same Wild Hunt that we all worked so hard to defeat, may I remind you. Shall we become spectral hunters, raiding other worlds to save our own frostbitten skins?”

“Shall we freeze to death instead, consoled by our spirit of noble compassion?”

“Sisters, sisters. Remember that our Lodge was created in a spirit of cooperation, with the goal of preserving the place of magic in the world—magic, above politics and all other worldly concerns. Working together, is there naught that we can do? Perhaps we cannot save a continent. But a kingdom?”

“For how long? If our little paradise is not raided by the starving, frozen, desperate—how long can a lone kingdom survive in a dead world? How long will we have the strength to maintain it?”

“Then what do you propose? What is the point of this preposterous gathering!”

“…Yen? Uh…”

“Yennefer?”

“Sister… that’s quite enough. We’ve all enough stress without that hideous braying. What on earth are you laughing at?”

“Don’t you see? We are not generals meeting in a war room. This is no battle. It is an apocalypse. We are finally, and for all time, outmatched.”

\- - -

In Novigrad, the towers burn before they freeze. The light of the Eternal Fire burns for three days without maintenance before a chance gust extinguishes the last ember. Snow muffles the howling of wind through the broken windows of Vivaldi Bank, the Passiflora, the Rosemary & Thyme.

In Cintra, the Frost finds empty streets, empty cottages, newly abandoned ruins.

In Brokkilon, the leshens emerge from the forest and array themselves in a line. Spectral, silent, their deer skulls stare without eyes at the western sky. They can sense the coming threat, and as they always have, the forest’s ancient guardians rise to its defense.

When the cold winds blow and snow gathers in their roots, the leshens remain still. There is nothing here to fight.

The waters of Brokkilon turn to ice. 

\- - -

“Keira, my. You’re looking splendid.”

“Ah. Yennefer. How appropriate. Doesn’t this remind you of the last time we saw each other? Frost, snow, the threat of imminent death…”

“Not imminent, I should hope. Have you made a plan for the Frost?” 

“Yes. I have picked out my finest dress and look forward to a merry day of sledding.”

“Ha, ha, Keira. Then you’ve no thought of escape? A few of the others have begun a sudden and intensive study of portal magic.”

“Don’t look so cross, Yennefer. Can you blame them? They’re no Wild Hunt. No one is coming back here. I take it you’re not setting off on their grand portal-hopping adventure?”

“Correct. I’ve invested much of my time in this world. It shall pain me to have to acquaint myself with another.”

“But Yennefer—imagine all the new schemes you could hatch!”

“What a delight you are, Keira. A perfect delight, as always. Speaking of schemes, we’re not truly pretending that you have no plans concocted for the Frost?”

“But I’ve already told you. You just didn’t listen. I’ve set aside my finest dress, and I shall magic up some fresh flowers. I’ve been saving a lovely bottle of sparkling white for a festive occasion. This one shall have to do. It shall be a beautiful day—and in the evening, I shall enjoy a warming mandrake cordial of approximately 90% fresh mandrake.”

“Mm. A decadent slide into oblivion.”

“Isn’t it? I’m rather proud, to tell you the truth. With so many resources available to her, I never understood why Tissaia slit her wrists. It seems such an untidy way out.”

“Will Lambert go with you in the same fashion?”

“Lambert… was caught in the cold.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Yes. Needlessly foolish way to go. Some of the alghouls here have mutated in the cold. A month ago, I would have called them fascinating. Lambert heard them attacking the refugees, and before I could tell him not to waste his time, off he ran with his silver sword swinging!”

“Witchers can’t help it, Keira. Even Lambert. It’s in their training to run toward monsters.”

“Yes. Well. He died like a witcher. He would have preferred that. Yennefer, I heard about Geralt and Ciri. Apologies-- I should have reached out sooner. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you, Keira.” 

“Strange lot, weren’t they? Witchers. And there go the last of them.”

“Not quite the last.”

“Hm? Oh, the maimed one. I forgot. Well, I’m sure he shall find some appropriately heroic yet futile way to perish, if he hasn’t already. Speaking of, my dear—I can see the snow coming. You must pardon me— I have an appointment to keep.”

“Ah, yes. Of course. Your sled awaits.”

“So it does. I’d like to say that it was a pleasure knowing you, but you were a scheming bitch most times and a hateful viper all the others.”

“And you were a vapid, inept manipulator with more hairbrushes than braincells.”

“Ha! The jest is on you. Most of those brushes were illusions. Good-bye, Yennefer.”

“Good-bye, Keira.”

\- - -

Zoltan tries everything he knows—every threat, every password, the invocation of every favor owed, imagined, or implied. The gates of Mahakam will not open. He comes back to them kicking at the dirt and cursing in Dwarvish. 

“Zoltan!” Dandelion says, in a cheerful voice that betrays no trace of the dread in his heart. “Careful, or your reputation for poetry will exceed mine!”

“Ah—” Zoltan says, followed by another passage of vulgar bravura. 

“Told you we should have taken some of the gold.” Dudu huddles inside an enormous bearskin cloak, at least three times larger than his present halfling shape. 

“And arrive here in three weeks’ time?” Priscilla dismisses the idea with a wave of her delicate hand. “What a pretty ice sculpture we’d all have made on the side of the road.”

Dandelion loves her then, more than he ever has. Her beauty, her charm, but her bravery most of all, because every step on the frozen road to nothingness is bravery. Now their last hope will not open its doors to them. Bravery has given them all it can.

“Can it be so? An increase in your exquisite beauty?” He kisses her hand. Her fingers are ice-cold. He pretends not to notice.

“Ahhh, get a room. Or build an igloo.” Zoltan heaves himself down into the snow. “Sure, Mahakam stinks like a manure field what with all the bullshit coming outta their mouths. But they at least knew the laws of hospitality once! Let a cousin in when he’s in need of assistance!”

“If we meet another dwarf…?” Dudu lifts his hands up appeasingly.

“We’ve not met any of those on the roads. Pfft. Radovid sure did his work. My only consolation is the knowledge that he’s freezing his bastard arse off somewhere. Hope it freezes to the latrine!” Zoltan spits. 

“From your lips to the gods’ ears!” 

“My boot to the gods’ ears. Where’s that damned spirit?” Zoltan rifles through his pack.

“You know, Zoltan—spirit may not be the best idea in the cold?” 

“Spirit’s always a good idea in these times.” Zoltan holds the bottle of dwarven spirit in the air triumphantly. “A toast—to the friends who cannae be here and the whoresons we don’t want here. May you rot in yer graves!” He takes an impressive swig. “Dudu. You next.”

“Ungh, Zoltan, I—”

“There en’t no tomorrow, lad. Drink while you’ve the belly to do it.”

Dudu takes the bottle as if it’s an infant that might spit up on him. “Eurm. A toast—to the ages of the earth and all who dwelled in them. May they sleep gently this winter.”

It’s a sobering toast, but not the wrong one. Every time the wind blows and their cloaks lift in the air current, they feel the chill of a looming truth. No need to examine that truth and see what’s contained there. It’s all around them in the leafless trees, the frozen earth. 

Priscilla takes the bottle next. “A toast—to the songs in our hearts, the songs in our past, the songs in the earth, and the songs to come.”

Dudu nods approvingly at the toast, Zoltan at the swig.

Dandelion accepts the bottle with hesitant hands. One of his secrets: he has never fully outgrown stage fright. The dazzling variety of his verbiage, the mellifluous menagerie of his melodies, even the flash of his costume, all of it’s a cover, an act. He knows too many people’s secrets. People want to hear their own secrets brought back to them, cleaned of uncertainty and polished to a bright veneer of meaning—that’s what bards are for—but these are not anonymous tavern patrons. These are his friends, his loves, and he knows their shared secret: they know they’re going to die soon, and none of them wants to die a coward. 

What can a bard do in the face of the end? 

Dandelion holds the bottle aloft, his face full of reverence. “A toast-- to the wisdom of the bottle. Friends and comrades, it’s time to drink!”

Zoltan leaps to his feet and gives a war whoop as if they’re about to charge into battle. Dudu’s eyes flare wide and Priscilla looks up at him with a grin on her face. Dandelion doesn’t know if she sees what he’s doing or not. Probably. She’s always been his double, his equal in knowing what other people don’t know about themselves and choosing the right moment to say it. 

Dandelion puts on his gloves and takes up his lute and starts into a whooping, foot-stomping jig. The spirit flows and Zoltan, that blessed battle-axe, insists that the other two get up and dance. They beat the frozen earth and cavort and Zoltan even gets red in the face. Dandelion slams down on the strings. Sometimes he means to, for the energy, and sometimes he doesn’t because his hands are going numb and he can’t control them. The dwarven spirit makes them all loose and wild and nobody notices when Dandelion’s fingers can’t quite curl into the right shape for a chord, or his voice cracks in the dry winter air. 

Soon, his fingers can’t bend at all. “Damn, I’m beat,” Dandelion pants. “Gimme that bottle. Someone else take over!”

“My turn!” Zoltan leaps onto a tree stump with Dudu’s pot and bellows a dwarven war song, banging the pot with the blunt end of his axe. It should be a terrifying tune in the middle of the night around a campfire, but they’re all quite sauced and somehow it seems appropriate. 

Priscilla leans into Dandelion, laughing into his neck. “You old hack,” she says. “You plagiarist.”

“Whensoever did I earn such accusations, my lady?” Dandelion pulls her hips into his. 

“Dunno. But you always get saucy when you’re indignant.” Her hand drifts below his belt, and gods, for a moment he doesn’t care that the world is dying. Priscilla is here and so is he, and they have this night.

They are quick, careless, and joyful in the darkness beyond the firelight. It’s very cold but he manages to do his duty. Priscilla laughs in her throat. Her voice is almost completely healed. She would have made a fine bard, perhaps a legendary one.

They come back, clothes askew. Zoltan’s laugh might have come from a grizzly bear. Dandelion invites Dudu to the dance and the three of them jig to Zoltan’s nonsensical song about blue cows and then porcupine armies and then fair lasses waiting for their loves at sea. It doesn’t matter. 

He finds himself on the ground. They’ve collapsed somehow, Zoltan has draped himself over a log, and apparently Dudu is reciting doppler poetry. Doppler poetry is a thing? Dandelion never knew. It is either very sad or very sexual and after another swig of spirit, Dandelion settles on sexual. 

The poetry stops. He sits up. They are all lying down. Priscilla is cuddling up next to his hip. Somewhere to the west, a winter wind is blowing.

Dandelion’s fingers are cold, almost numbed. He’s not sure that he can play the chords. He picks up his lute anyway. Poor thing, it’s strained in the cold, too.

“I haven’t played this one in a while,” he murmurs. Zoltan and Dudu don’t stir but Priscilla squeezes her fingers on his thigh. Gods bless this woman. A surge of feeling seizes him and he doesn’t want her to die, can’t bear the thought of her dying. Can’t take another breath because she must. 

“Silence?” she mumbles. He can feel her face shifting as she grins against his thigh. “A rare sound indeed from Master Dandelion.”

“Hmph!” he says. It’s the cold making his voice crack, surely. He strums, it is near enough to the right chord, and begins to sing. It is an old song that not even Priscilla has heard. In the song, a witcher and a lady bard meet with sand at their feet and a salt wind in their hair. They meet each other’s eyes, fall desperately in love. Their love lasts the ages and makes them immortal. His fingers ache, burn, and rebel, but he plays even as they go numb. One last little sacrifice. He makes it gladly.

It is a long ballad, but he has never forgotten the words. When he plucks the last note, no one moves or makes a sound. Priscilla’s hand is motionless on his thigh.

Dandelion smiles. No one sees it. 

What can a bard do in the face of the end? What he has always done: make life a little more bearable. So Dandelion sings the song again from the top, knowing that it no longer matters when he misses a chord and his voice goes off-key. He’s still mumbling the lyrics when he drifts off to sleep.

\- - -

“Triss? Are you there? Triss, please…”

“Philippa! I know you can hear me, you— you bloody conniving swine! What do you say to that?”

“Fringilla?”

“Rita?”

“Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?”

\- - -

The ice freezes around the grape vines of Toussaint. 

In a cave southwest of Beauclair, an ancient being opens its eyes. Every movement on this debased plane is agony. It turns its head to sniff. It is gone, it is back. Even a witcher would not have had time to blink. 

The sound it makes through its nostrils may be disgust or resignation. The golden eyes shut.

\- - -

Yennefer is alone everywhere. 

Vengerberg is her first destination. A sentimental choice, but nostalgia is slow to fade even for sorceresses. The megascope shows her the teeth of a beautiful skull: elegant buildings, delicate gardens, neatly cobblestoned streets, everything lustered by a crust of ice.

She tries Korath next, swinging from the extreme of sentimentality to the extreme of pragmatism. Nothing grows in that desert, so the snow flattens under the sky without breaking. 

She has never been to Ofir and possesses nothing from there, so that rules out her preferred third choice. On a perverse whim, she summons a view of Rivia. It is where she died once; perhaps it would be poetic to finish dying there. She has been the unwitting subject of enough ballads that she can imagine the verse that would place her there, just before the final chorus as the lute strings swell. But it is an unimaginative ruin and a singularly uninspiring place to die, especially a second time.

A local solution, then.

Keira serves as her inspiration. Yennefer draws a marvelously hot bath, replete with lilac-scented bubbles, and places the unicorn within eyesight. Such pleasant memories in that beast! She indulges without shame in a lively commemoration of the past and in the warm dissolving glow of the aftermath, she allows herself the lightest shade of self-pity. Oh, woe is me, one of the last surviving sorceresses on the Continent. Ah, alas, to lose everything I hold dear as the world is encased in ice. 

Perhaps it’s the Est Est—another inspiration from Keira—but something shifts in her mind and suddenly she is impatient with this whole scenario. Shall she sit wrinkling in the water, amusing herself with the litany of her own sorrows? A century ago, a young girl in Aretuza attempted to take her own life. But she is no longer that girl. She is Yennefer of Vengerberg, sorceress, survivor of the Battle of Sodden, member of the Lodge, teacher and almost-mother of the Elder Blood, counselor to kings. And here she sits, plotting her death in a bath tub.

“Gods damn it!”

Yennefer kicks over the goblet of spiced wine and hemlock. It topples harmlessly to the floor.

\- - -

It happens by accident.

Yennefer’s hair is still drying. She doesn’t bother to dress because the heartiron stones work just as well as the merchant promised, keeping this lone chamber in the abandoned castle warm. It’s been several days since she’s seen anyone, even with the megascope. She last spotted life in Dol Blathanna—undoubtedly, the elves have squirreled (she imagines Geralt saying it and herself admonishing him) away some arcane secret to wield against the Frost. May it do them good. 

The megascope serves as her entertainment, muse, and confidant. No one has answered in weeks, but it opens a window to the world. Yennefer flips restlessly through the cities she has visited, the rivers and inns she has known. Then she idly thinks of the people she’s met, reaches out for them. Odds of finding anyone are diminishingly low. Dandelion—no answer. Cerys—nothing. Eskel—

The megascope’s crystals flare. Yennefer’s back straightens. 

Eskel is crouched in the dirt. It is him, he is alive. Yennefer has the presence of mind to snap her fingers and summon the illusion of clothing. Her mouth opens and closes.

“Eskel! You’re alive!”

The witcher springs to his feet, agile as ever. Feline eyes lock onto hers in the silver shimmer.

“…Yennefer?” His voice is rougher than usual, disused.

“Yes. It’s me. My gods, Eskel. You’ve survived. How?”

Eskel’s reactions take several seconds to catch up with her. “Hasn’t been easy. Where are you? How are you talking to me?”

“The megascope, my friend. They’re surprisingly durable, given proper maintenance. Damn it, witcher. It’s so good to see you.”

Eskel’s smile is slow to spread but warm. “You, too, tell you the truth. But do you have to drop in without warning? I could have been on the latrine.”

“But you weren’t. Are you safe? Are you—well?”

“For the end of the world, I could be worse.” He grins self-consciously. “And I see you’re as—vigorous as ever, Yen.”

“Yes, I’m intact. More than I can say for others.” She’s talking, talking to a real living person. She also has no idea what to say, so she falls back on his preferred subject: work. “Did you know that fiends can turn rabid in extreme conditions?”

“Really?” He leans forward. “Always thought their constitutions resisted common diseases like rabies. Sure it’s not a psychological condition? Or some kinda viral infection? The Frost comes from another world—never know, might be giving us more than icicles.”

“A fascinating theory. Perhaps we ought to discuss it in person.”

Eskel has no idea what to make of this proposition. Yennefer can’t read minds from this distance, and certainly not through a megascope, but the man is blessed and cursed with an honest face. “Uh…”

“Where are you at this moment?”

“Near Kaer Morhen. But—” 

“Kaer Morhen? You realize the White Frost is a killing cold, yes? So naturally, you picked the coldest place you know for shelter?”

“Wouldn’t feel much of a difference, would I?”

“A sound strategy, one I heartily applaud. I shall join you directly.”

“Wait.”

“Yes?”

Eskel stares. She notices that he’s holding a spade. Intriguing. “I’m having a little trouble here. You just popped into the air, and now you wanna… come visit?”

“Via portal, of course. I suspect overland travel would prove unpleasantly brisk.”

“Are you planning something?”

“What do you think?”

He is thinking of their past, Yennefer guesses, and who they were before the Frost. After a moment to think, he comes to the same conclusion she has: he shrugs. “Know what? Why the hell not. Come over.” Eskel laughs at how absurd he sounds, and she finds herself joining in.

“See you shortly, Eskel.”

Yennefer cuts off the megascope’s connection. Now, this is proper madness… but then, it is the Time of Madness and Disdain. In Tedd Deireádh, this is perfectly appropriate.

The portal takes a long time to prepare, the packing more so. At least it is easy to say good-bye to her little hideaway. The air always smelled faintly musty.

“Cavii, kavar!” Yennefer commands, and the portal opens. 

A moment later, she is standing in the middle of a mountain meadow. The air is thick with moisture. She catches the smell of wet earth and then the sudden movement of Eskel reeling backwards.

“Whoa.” He catches his balance and Yennefer beams at him. A human—well—another living being, here in the same space. His existence is miraculous. And his scar doesn’t look quite so horrifying in the sunlight. 

“Eskel.” 

“Yen.”

They’re awkward. Each of them looks the same, but nothing else does. They are standing in a lush meadow—ridiculously lush for this mountain territory, in fact. It is sheltered on three sides by sheer rock faces, with the north side opening to a vista of the Blue Mountains. Past the northern lip of the meadow, a mountain trail leads steeply downward. It plunges into snow drifts the height of a man’s head not a hundred feet down from where they stand. A canyon has been carved into the snow drift, making a rough-hewn tunnel—Eskel’s work, no doubt. And yet, in bowshot distance of that massive snowdrift, Yennefer stands in summer heat. Eskel is wearing only a light linen shirt. 

“What is this place?” Yennefer asks.

Eskel doesn’t answer. He’s too busy eying the tower of trunks and chests at her feet. “Yen. I said you could visit, not move in.”

“But of course. These are merely the amenities necessary to ensure a comfortable visit.” 

“Your amenities are crushing my potatoes.”

“Ah. So they are. Shall we move them?”

Eskel’s eyes harden. “Know what. Think I’ve changed my mind. This was a bad idea.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Don’t speak? Don’t think… unless I agree with you?” Eskel crosses his arms over his chest. 

“Don’t be foolish.” There’s an edge in her voice. “Or illogical. I’ve not done anything to you, have I?”

“Not to me.”

His unspoken words ring more loudly than the spoken.

Yennefer is very slow, very careful. “Do you think I killed him, Eskel? Do you think I sent him to Crookback Bog? Is that it?”

Eskel works his jaw. “Dunno about that. I know you’re here and he’s not.”

For a fleeting moment, Yennefer wants to kill him. “That was—” 

She remembers. The defeated slump of his shoulders. The viper-eyes staring at nothing. The beloved voice turning cold. 

Yennefer swallows it down. “That was his choice. Geralt was… done fighting.” She looks at him. “As am I. As you must be. Can we put aside these pointless hostilities, Eskel?”

That breaks through to him. The tension in Eskel’s shoulders releases, and he exhales. “Nothing left to fight, I guess. Or fight for.” He uncrosses his arms, a type of reconciliation. “Listen… you can stay a little while, if you want. But let’s agree on one thing—you don’t order me around. You don’t talk to me like I’m a child or a fool.”

She stifles the five scathing replies that suggest themselves. “Of course not.”

They are awkward and unmoving again. Then Eskel’s lip quirks, and he crouches to lift one of the trunks. “Not sure why you found me in the first place, or what you’re hoping to find here.”

“You know perfectly well.” Yennefer lets him keep the trunk he’s got. The others, she levitates with a simple spell. “Where do these go?”

Eskel jerks his head toward a cave leading into the eastern rock face. What a cozy set up. Now she can see the three stone monoliths positioned in a triangle around the meadow. Thirty feet from the last two monoliths, the snowline begins. A magically maintained micro-climate—clever. “That cave,” Eskel says. “Other one gets too wet. Magic here turns all the snow into rain. Sorry… what am I supposed to know about you coming here?”

“Why, it’s the same reason you invited me here.”

Eskel lays the trunks down. The cave is neatly kept, supplies organized and stacked against the back wall and a bedroll tucked into the farthest corner. It’s shaped like a horseshoe, and the other entrance to the cave is nearly shut up with chopped and stacked firewood. Eskel straightens and looks her in the eye, eyebrows furrowed. 

Yennefer places her hands on her hips. “Terrible thought, isn’t it—dying alone?” 

He blinks, looks down a moment. Sniffs. Looks up. Approaches her until he stands close. 

Eskel holds her gaze a moment. Then he’s looking north, pointing to a corner of the meadow where it widens against the eastern rock face. “Latrine’s in the northeast corner. Trying to keep things hygienic for the long run. You need snow for water, get it from the northwest. See the two pines parting like—uhhh, like barber’s scissors? You can get it there without freezing your ass off.”

He looks at her to see if she’s understood. Yennefer nods. “I’ve brought my own supplies, as well. Perhaps I can enhance the—farm you’ve made here.”

“Sounds great. It’s not much, but it got me this far.”

“Fret not. I promise not to eat you out of house and home.”

Eskel grins. “Already out of house and home. No worries there.” 

The grin lingers unnoticed on his face as he crouches to the earth and sees to his wounded potatoes. As Yennefer enters the cave to unpack her things, she discovers that she is smiling faintly, too. 

It is still the end of the world, but someone else is here.


	2. The Kingdom of Strangers

…and one knows,  
after a long time of solitude, after the many steps taken  
away from one's kind, toward the kingdom of strangers,  
the hard prayer inside one's own singing  
is to come back, if one can, to one's own,  
a world almost lost, in the exile that deepens,  
when one has lived a long time alone.

\--Galway Kinnell, "When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone"

In the morning, Eskel startles awake. Someone is breathing nearby. It’s Yennefer. The realization is a whirlwind.

He had a routine before she appeared. In the morning, meditation. He’d practice the old forms and end with a sequence that Vesemir didn’t teach him. It begins with a flurry of reverse grip stabs and ends with a crouch, a roll, a vicious diagonal cut, a dodging spin, and a final killing thrust to the back. The sequence would have killed the mage of the Wild Hunt if Eskel had known it then. Too late. So he practices it now: the diagonal cut, the spin away from the mage’s staff, the final stab. He kills the mage again and again until his shoulders cramp.

At noon, or whatever passes for noon when the snow falls, a meal of potatoes and beans. In the afternoon, weeding, draining, pruning, peeling, and maintenance. In the evening, potatoes, a mouthful of White Gull, and the books that he’s stored in the cave. Right now, he’s halfway through Troll Psychology: A New Perspective, and he was looking forward to the section on linguistic patterns.

Then Yennefer arrived. 

She doesn’t mention it, but Eskel remembers that he hasn’t bathed in three days. He catches her watching him slay the mage thirty times and he wonders if twenty is enough.

The meadow on the mountain had been his private kingdom. Yennefer has made it something else, something he can’t control any more. 

He’s trying to remember how to live with other people—how to establish borders, how to yield.

\- - -

“’Scuse me.”

“Eskel. Last I reviewed the status of my visibility, it seemed well within standard range.”

“Yeah, well, you’re in range of my weeding. C’mon, I wanna finish this row.”

“I beg your pardon. I was unaware that weeds posed such a dire threat, they could not wait a mere half an hour.”

“Why wait at all? Who are you even talking to? There’s no one on the other side.”

“Spoken without evidence.”

“You said it yourself. You haven’t seen anyone but me in weeks. C’mon, move. Your megascope takes up half the damned meadow.”

“I will move when I’ve concluded my session, thank you.”

“Yen. This is how we eat. I need to take care of these plants. So—pretty please— move.”

“I’ve no interest in repeating myself.”

\- - -

Yen’s turned her back to him. She’s standing at the limit of the monoliths’ unnatural warmth. There’s green grass, then Yen’s black and white dress, and beyond her, a twilight of granite and snow.

Eskel finishes scraping her share of fried potato onto a plate. His shadow dances in front of him and holds a shade of her plate out to a shadow Yennefer.

Flesh-and-blood Yennefer glares at the plate. She takes it with reluctance.

He can’t exactly remember what pissed him off. Some insolence in her eyes, maybe. They’re gorgeous in the light, but sometimes they look at him as if he’s a sewer rat crawling through her kitchen. She’d made a casually cutting remark, he snipped, she snapped, and then he invited her to go back to where she came from, with a few colorful descriptions thrown in for flavor. He doesn’t regret saying them, exactly. But she’s seething to match the monoliths and now it’s a situation.

Let her. Eskel sits in the grass, cuts into his own potato, lets it steam. It tastes like unseasoned potato. 

From the edge of the meadow, a fork scrapes on a plate and brings a bite to her mouth. She makes a muted sound of displeasure. 

Eskel lowers his plate to his lap. “Sorry— did I forget the butter and rosemary?” 

Yen turns. In the firelight, she’s a little terrifying. Eskel has wrestled with manticores, rotfiends, leshens, vampires, Caranthir of the Wild Hunt, almost always alone. She’s a sorceress and a woman and somehow, she is more alien. 

Yen commands eye contact. Without breaking it, she waves her fingers over her food and spits arcane words. 

When she’s done, an array of exquisite Duchess potatoes sits on her plate. Their spirals are baked to a perfect golden-brown and Eskel can smell the richness of butter, salt, and nutmeg.

Yen pops the morsels into her mouth one by one. She’s glaring at him the entire time.

“Mm,” she says when she’s done, patting a delicate finger at the corner of her mouth. 

“Hey.” Eskel holds his plate up. “Lemme get some of that.”

Yen strides toward him, bends over, lays her empty plate in the grass next to him. “No.”

Then she’s off to the cave.

\- - -

Death is coming.

Eskel grips his sword and breathes. No one will help him. He knows that, and he’ll fight anyway.

The shadows bend. A darkness opens in the keep and Death emerges. He’s wearing a circular crown and an iron staff whirls in his grip. 

Eskel’s pace is slow as he circles, deliberate. His opponent immediately understands. Not even Death will enter Kaer Morhen unchallenged. 

There is no battle cry, no exchange of words. Eskel hurls himself at Death and weapons clash, steel rings, he’ll cut Death down and if his blades won’t cut he’ll use a hammer, he’ll—

Crouch, roll. The diagonal stroke cuts the air but he doesn’t spin aside, he never remembers to spin, and the staff crashes through his Quen shield and into his chest. His ribs crack. Eskel can’t breathe, he can’t move, he’s gasping on the ground. Death looms above him.

Eskel can feel his lungs filling with blood. He’s heard that bubbling sound many times. The monsters make it when he runs them through with silver. 

“No,” he croaks. “I won’t let you.”

Death stands above him. It has no eyes but it does have huge iron gauntlets and the gauntlets are gripping severed heads: Vesemir’s, Ciri’s, Geralt’s, Lambert’s—

“No! No—” 

Eskel’s voice cuts short. He’s choking on blood—

“Eskel.”

He chokes.

“Eskel. Shhhh. It’s over. Come back.”

Eskel claws at his shattered ribs, only they aren’t broken. There’s breath in his lungs. He breathes huge disbelieving breaths.

His eyes open and he’s in his cave. Yennefer kneels next to his bedroll. She’s pressing a hand to his chest and a silver flare glows beneath her fingers, spreading warmth where it touches him.

Eskel breathes. He can breathe now.

“It’s alright,” Yennefer says quietly. “He’s gone. Caranthir is dead. Ciri shattered his staff, and Geralt finished the job.” Her smile is a tender, pitiful thing. “Such a battle.”

“You saw it?”

“Yes.” Pause. “You fought him alone at Kaer Morhen. Protecting Ciri. I didn’t know that.”

Eskel lets his head loll back, lets the warmth of her magic spill into the muscles that never fully relax. He always needs to fight Caranthir, in his dreams and in his forms. “How’d you know what I was dreaming?”

“A limited and judicious application of mind-reading.”

“Huh. Geralt always used to talk about that. Said he’d think of a snappy comeback but you’d have a better one ready, ‘cause you could read his mind. Always thought it was an excuse.”

The silver glow fades under her fingertips and so does the healing warmth. Eskel rolls his head to the side so he can see her face. Yennefer is staring down. Her face is mostly still, except for the edge of her mouth pulling backwards. The surface cracking over a void without end.

Eskel rolls onto his side. He lays his hand over her wrist. At the moment of contact, Yennefer yanks her hand back and leans back on her heels.

“Sorry.” He lifts his hands to show he doesn’t mean harm. “I didn’t—” 

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Eskel.” Yennefer shakes her head. “I just… need to sleep.”

It’s such a bald lie that all he can do is look at her. She tilts her head, her violet eyes washed pale gray in the darkness. Eskel guesses that she’s reading his mind.

“Yeah. Long day,” Eskel says, an equally idiotic lie. The days are all the same here.

Yennefer looks at him sidelong and her face shifts a little. An expression of gratitude, for keeping the lie. “Better dreams to you, Eskel.”

“Thanks, Yen. You too.”

Her silhouette crosses to her own bedroll on the other side of the cave and melts into the deeper shadows there. Eskel listens for her heartbeat. It doesn’t slow into the rhythm of sleep for some time.

The next day, Eskel practices the forms that Vesemir taught him and kills Caranthir only once. At their noon meal, he’s about to tuck into his boiled potato when Yennefer stops him. 

“Just a moment.” She lifts her hand over his plate and mutters a few words. There’s a smell of butter and rosemary.

“An illusion,” Yennefer says as Eskel pokes the butter that has appeared on his potato. “It can fool the senses, if not the stomach. In Aretuza, my sisters considered this magic vulgar.”

“Mm. I’ll make sure not to tell ‘em.” He shovels a forkful of potato into his mouth experimentally and discovers that tastebuds are worthless at detecting illusions. “Ooooh, gods, Yen...!”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Eskel. I’m glad you enjoy it.” She looks quite pleased with herself as she digs into her plate of scalloped potatoes covered with herbs and cheese.

\- - -

“What are you doing? When I said stay close, I meant ‘within the spell’s shield.’ It’s not because I fear being mugged by snow hares.”

“Relax. Quen’s enough to keep out the cold, in short bursts.”

“Yes, you witchers are terribly proud of your signs. And every little boy with a stick thinks himself a warrior. Don’t be foolish, your Quen shield will break in a matter of seconds.”

“You seen mine break yet? I’ve got it up to ten minutes at a time. Almost fifteen, once. How’d you think I made that snow tunnel?”

“Hm. I must admit that your signs are comparatively potent. I’ve not seen Quen last so long against the Frost.”

“Heh.”

“What?”

“Can tell you got your idea about signs from someone specific.”

“Well, yes—why are you smirking? Are you turning this into a competition?”

“Wouldn’t call it a competition. Geralt couldn’t Aard his way past a paper screen.”

“Oh, gods. Boastful little boys, all of you.”

“Psst. Look up there. Think that’s it.”

“That cave? Very well. Prepare yourself.”

“Prepared already. Hm. No tracks, no territorial markings. Gone into hibernation, maybe, except…”

“What is it?”

“The smell…”

“Something tells me we’re not the first to consider bear meat… aha. Well… something enjoyed itself here immensely.”

“Look at this. See the claw scratches in the rock? Three claws, splayed like a bird’s, middle digit longest?”

“No.”

“Forktail tracks. Young adult male, probably. Must’ve gotten hungry as the deer died off, started picking off whatever prey it could find. Including our bear friend. Foul reptile. Here’s hoping the bear gave it the runs.”

“Do you suppose the forktail is still alive?”

“These are old bones. ‘Sides, forktails are cold-blooded. I can’t see a reptile surviving the cold for this long, unless it’s a dragon. Fire in the belly and all that.”

“I’d say this forktail proved remarkably resilient. It certainly knew how to cover the ‘bear’ necessities… It’s a pun, Eskel. People occasionally say them in jest.”

“Yeah, got that part. Come on. We passed a downed walnut tree on the way up. Let’s get some firewood out of it, so the trip isn’t a total waste. Uh. Yen, you…?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing. I’m fine. Let’s go.”

\- - -

Eskel’s routine shifts by degrees, and Yennefer establishes her own habits within its borders. In the morning, preparation of ingredients: spell components, which he understands, and cosmetics, which he does not. She applies her powders and creams every morning, and the last is always her scent. Geralt’s old phrase becomes Eskel’s when he smells it. 

Next, the noon meal. It’s usually simple; Yen saves her elaborate efforts for suppertime. Old ideas about the vulgarity of illusion magic die hard. In the afternoon, she starts finding ways to apply magic to their setup, usually the food. The soil drains better, the potatoes grow a little fatter, the beans plumper, the mushrooms thicker. She uses the megascope less and less. At suppertime, she experiments with her illusions to produce elaborate dishes that Eskel has never tasted before. He’s eaten better in this meadow than he ever has, even if the food is mostly illusory.

The most dangerous time is after supper. They aren’t sure what to do with themselves. At first, they read separately, in silence. Eskel invites her to card games when she’s not in her books. She plays willingly but without enthusiasm. Sometimes, they talk. It’s halting, at times absurdly polite, other times blunt and ungraceful. Geralt’s presence hangs over them even if neither mentions his name. Eskel and Yennefer have never talked alone. They existed in each other’s worlds because of Geralt, and now that he’s gone, Eskel can feel their conversations still opening to accommodate Geralt’s presence. 

One evening, Yen teleports in the bathtub from Kaer Morhen. They have to dig the snow out from inside—the roof has caved in, she tells him, the floors are covered with snow. Now she spends some nights soaking in the water and Eskel pretends extreme interest in the opposite side of the meadow. The meadow isn’t large. 

He hasn’t been with a woman in a long time. For all the times he’s distrusted her, resented her, pissed her off, Yennefer is a very, very beautiful woman.

It’s torture.

He starts inventing excuses to leave. Yen summons water for the bath and Eskel is already firing up his Quen shield and walking north. Sure, he feels like an idiot marching through the snow that gets a little higher every day. But staying in that little meadow with a naked Yennefer nearby—

Eskel growls to himself, a low rumble lost in the wind. 

Loneliness had been simple. He understood it, from long days on the Path with no one but Scorpion. This other thing— it’s new, it makes him restless. 

On the positive side, he can now hold his Quen for seventeen minutes.

\- - -

“You know, Eskel, I’ve just realized something.”

“What’s that?”

“You witchers have finally achieved your goal. All of the monsters are dead.”

“Heh. Would you look at that? Guess I can retire. How about some place quiet. I’m thinking a mountain view, nice brisk breeze, a feast of potatoes whenever I want…”

“How luxurious. Would you have any interest in taking on a sorceress as your advisor?”

“Of course. Need to know where to put my investments. What should I do with my monopoly on the potato market?”

“Create a starch empire and rule it with an iron fist. The world shall tremble at your name.”

“I was thinking potato vodka. Something you can drink. Yeast culture’s still going. Might be able to work that still, too. Whip together a little celebration for Yule.”

“Yule? We’re not anywhere close to Yule.”

“Look at that snow. Every day is Yule. Want a swig?”

“Of that witcher toxin? No, thank you. I enjoy my intact esophagus. It’s one of my best qualities.”

“We could dilute it?... A’right, suit yourself.”

“What did you want, Eskel? When you were on the Path. Did you foresee some end goal for yourself? A home, a wife, some pleasant reward waiting at the end of your labors?”

“Heh. Pleasant reward. Not how our lives go, Yen. Best we can hope for? Whatever beast does the job, it kills before it eats.”

“Yes, yes, I duly admire your machismo. Surely that’s not all. Were you truly satisfied with the life of a witcher? Did you want for nothing, plan for nothing beyond the Path?”

“Lot of people act as if a witcher’s life’s no good. Sure, there’s crap. Clients who don’t pay. Monsters that don’t die. Folk who think you’re a cross between devilspawn and something a horse stepped in. And on and on. I get it. But the life worked for me. Look at the war with Nilfgaard and Redania that had everyone blabbering—remember that, before the world went to shit? Lotta men got drafted for those wars. If I wasn’t a witcher, they’d draft me. I’d still be fighting, but for what? Someone else’s power. Someone else’s fight. Lotta men died to keep a crown on some jackass’s head. Not for me. When you’re a witcher, you can choose your fights—take the contract, the monster and the coin, or walk away. No bardic crap about honor, country, and valor. Just killing monsters.”

“It sounds so simple in your telling. I find it hard to believe that the trade never became complicated.”

“It could. But I kept it simple.”

“By following the witcher’s code strictly and faithfully?”

“By staying honest. By knowing who I was and what I had to do, and stickin’ to it. I didn’t wanna be a hero or some famous knight, didn’t want anyone tellin’ stories about me. I wanted to do my job well.”

“To be of use, yes. Was it enough for you?”

“Know what. Yeah. It was.”

“A good thing you became a witcher, Eskel. There are few trades suited to an honest man, without a risk of his being cheated, exploited, or turned into a scapegoat and murdered in some spectacular public fashion.”

“That why you’ve got an allergy to honesty?”

“Eskel.”

“Not picking a fight, Yen. Just tryin’ to understand you. Why you hid things we needed to know, back then. Why you tricked Geralt so many times.”

“I hid nothing. I merely imparted information at the appropriate time, which you will remember, and I will kindly ask you to refrain from deliberately misremembering. As for Geralt, I did not trick him, and anything I could not reveal, he later understood and forgave.”

“’course he forgave you. You made him your lapdog.”

“I did no such thing. He—made himself what he was. He loved through service. He knew no other way to love except to offer all of himself, even in Rinde. We’d just met, and he condemned himself to me. And then he had Ciri. Geralt lived for other people, but especially for her. So when she died… he did, too. Before he ever set foot in that bog.”

“Yen…”

“Don’t touch me!”

“Okay. Yen, he was my brother, too.”

“Yes. Ahem. Yes, he was, though you’re quite different.”

“Yeah. He got the good looks.”

“And you have honesty. For many years, he struggled to achieve that very simple thing: the willingness to know himself. Very well, Eskel. If I have deceived or misled you in the past, I… apologize. And I shall try be honest with you now.”

“A’right. Long as we’re being honest, can I ask you a question?”

“Of course. Honestly.”

“You mentioned the other sorceresses jumped ship. They followed that elven Sage through a portal to another world, one without the Frost. Why didn’t you go with them?”

“Ah. I could tell you that portal magic is unpredictable, unreliable, and highly dangerous. But the honest truth is: I did not go with them because Geralt and Ciri are dead.”

“So you’re doing what Geralt did. Not killing yourself, but not saving yourself, either.”

“I suppose. I gave it a thought—the more direct route. Wine and hemlock. But as the moment approached, I found myself incapable of it. I am… unaccustomed to outright surrender.”

“Me too. ‘Swhy we’re still here. Too damned stubborn to die. Don’t know any better than to keep going. And look where it’s got us: couple a’ retirees in a little magic paradise.”

“I thought we were being honest with each other, Eskel.”

“We are. Which is why I’m gonna tell you something else: I’m glad you didn’t surrender, Yen. I didn’t always like you. You know that. But I’m glad you’re here now, with me.”

“Thank you, Eskel. Truly.”

“Here’s to honesty. Sure you don’t want some?”

“No, thank you. But tomorrow, let’s see to that still.”

\- - -

Yen fills the bathtub with water. Eskel closes _Arachnids, Vol III: The Southern Realms_ , gets up, and walks toward the end of the meadow.

“Eskel?”

He freezes but doesn’t turn around. “Yeah, Yen?”

“Before you go, a favor?”

Something different about her voice. He senses it instinctively, with something other than witcher senses. “What do you need.”

“The pitcher.”

Eskel turns away from the granite and snow. His eyes swing along the grass and end at the tub, where one of her arms is leaning careless over the edge. She’s pointing to the mouth of the cave. A pitcher is sitting there, where it never sits. 

He’s avoided looking at her. That’s impossible now. Her black hair is spilling down her shoulders and floating on the water’s surface, a dark river into the sea. Her shoulders are bare, glistening. The glint in her eyes matches a knowingness in her smile, and he feels something he’s stifled begin to stir. This is not about a pitcher. This is about the kingdom they’ve built, hers and his, and the shape of it.

It is about twenty paces to the bathtub. An undefended border. He can fortify, or he can yield.

All of these weeks. The walks he took outside the meadow to get away from her.

Eskel crosses the boundary. The choice is made. He walks toward her, stopping within an arm’s reach of the bathtub. Her presence eclipses everything else. He breathes and the air is the scent of water, lilac, gooseberries, her warm human pulse, her expectant heartbeat. Her body curving under the water. 

Their eyes meet. He’s awake now, all of him.

“I asked,” he says, “what you need.”

Yennefer stands. The water parts and pours down her raven-black hair, down her breasts, the slope of her belly and the curves of her hips and thighs.

She holds her arms out to him. “Come here,” she says, “and let me show you.”

They’re done circling each other. He knows her reach, her style, where she’ll parry, where she’ll yield.

Eskel grabs her wrist, pulls her toward him. Her wet body presses into him. He feels his damp shirt, and after the linen, the heat of her. Her eyes flash. He squeezes her wrist and reaches up with his other hand, brushing up the back of her neck, to wrap his fingers in a fistful of her damp hair. 

He doesn’t yank, doesn’t pull. He leans forward so their foreheads touch and holds her head in place with her hair. They’re sharing breaths. Hers has turned husky.

“I want to hear you.” Eskel’s voice is low, taut with the effort of speaking. “Say it.”

Her fist clenches and releases. He doesn’t let go of her wrist. Yen’s glaring at him, violet to viper, tries to lean forward and touch her lips to his, but she’s trapped in his grip. 

“I… need… you…” It’s a snarl, a pant. “…to touch me. To put aside all of your careful proprieties and fuck me as if I am the last woman on earth, because I am. I need you to give me everything you think about when you leave for your walks. Oh yes. I’ve seen your thoughts, I know what you imagine. You animal. Be that animal with me, Eskel, touch me, fuck me until you make me shiver and scream—”

He can’t take anymore. He grips her hair, forces her mouth to his, and kissing is too gentle a word for their biting struggle of lips and teeth and tongues. She pushes on his chest with his free hand and he wraps both arms around her, lifts her out of the tub, brings them both down to the grass. He doesn’t want to touch water, he wants to touch her, and she’s rolling him onto his back and tearing at his shirt. It’s up to his armpits when she lets go and plants her hands on his stomach, nails raking into his skin so that he yells and has to struggle to get his shirt off the rest of the way, get his arms free to grab her by the shoulders and bite the slope of her neck. She moans into his shoulder and drags her nails along his ribs.

They’re ferocious. They’ve both waited too long and they’re too old and too doomed to apologize for their desires. His trousers disappear at one point and things go faster, a blur of sensation and need. She’s using magic to hold him down while she teases him with her mouth and hands. He retaliates with Yrden so she’s pinned in place and he can watch her face as each individual finger does its work. She slaps him and he holds her down by her wrists to pound into her and doesn’t stop until she’s gasping with both pleasure and pain. She levitates them mid-air, only so high so they don’t escape the monoliths’ protection, and when he realizes that they are thirty feet in the air, she claws at his scalp and hisses, “Don’t stop. You’re thinking of stopping but I won’t let you. I’ll kill you if you stop.” He doesn’t stop.

They catch each other’s wild eyes some moments and he knows they need this. He didn’t see it before but now they’re here, two of them alone in a winter that has killed everything else, and they need to be alive. They need to fuck until the mountains echo.

Eskel doesn’t let himself finish until she dissolves into whimpering shivers for the fifth time. He wraps his arm around her neck, the other around her chest under her breasts, holds her against him so that every inch of her back curves against his hips and belly and chest, pushes her against the rock face, drives into her. She’s choking on his arm, moaning, gripping his hip with her hand and squeezing. He’s given her what she asked and now his need can possess him. He’s rapid, hard, verging on brutal. Everything gathers, everything builds, until the consuming animal urge explodes and he is finally relieved.

They come back to themselves, sweaty, aching, and panting for breath. All of Yen’s claw marks start stinging at once. Eskel staggers a few steps and collapses on his back in the grass. Yen looks down at him, sees his arm flop outward in invitation, and lies down with her head in the crook of his shoulder and her arm draped over his chest.

They lie and breathe and Eskel listens to their heartbeats gradually slowing down.

“Oh, look,” Eskel says. “We knocked the pitcher down.”

Yen laughs. Her arm over his chest squeezes him in an embrace. 

They let the new territory define itself in the silence. Eskel has a stray thought to ask Yen to conjure some snacks, but he lets it go.

“You’re very entertaining,” Yen says, squeezing him again.

“Heh. Thanks. Had a lot of time to come up with ideas.” Eskel rubs his palm over her naked shoulder. “Did you, uh… really read my mind?”

“Yes. Mostly by accident. Your thoughts of that nature are deafening.”

“Huh. ‘Kay—so what am I thinking right now?”

Yen lifts her head off his shoulder. Her hair tickles him. “Something sweet. Why, Eskel. I appreciate your stamina, but I at least would appreciate a rest before we attempt a second round.”

Eskel glides his fingers over her arm, a soft touch in contrast with the way they’d touched each other before. “Not a second round. I’ll need a nap before we do that. No, I meant—just for you. Now that I can think straight. Slow down a little.” He grins. 

“Hmm.” Yennefer returns his grin with a slow-spreading smile. “If you go slowly. And stop when I’ve had enough. I’m not sure I can finish.”

“S’alright. Just wanna make you feel good.”

“In that case…” Yennefer turns onto her back. Her hand cups the back of his head and gently guides him toward the space between her legs.

\- - -

Yen doesn’t finish, but it is slow and sweet. They’re both more relaxed as they lie together afterward. After the battle earlier, this feels like a lasting peace.

“Eskel?”

His eyes are closed. “Mm?”

“Do you love me?”

His eyes open. Eskel stares at the sky and wonders how to say that he doesn’t.

Yen laughs and lays her head on his chest. “Thank you.”

“That was the right answer?”

“Yes. Honesty.”

\- - -

The borders have shifted, and their routine shifts a few degrees with it.

Eskel still practices his forms in the morning, ready to kill monsters that must all be dead by now, but that’s how he is. He needs his body to be useful. Yennefer works on her components, though it is getting harder: some supplies are running out, and they don’t have the seeds to grow new ones. They eat and in the afternoon, Eskel tends the plants, maintains tools and clothing, cleans while Yennefer buries herself in books. She says she’s studying solutions. He could ask what solutions, but until anything comes of it, it’s all insubstantial. He is coming to understand her relationship with information.

After their sumptuous illusory supper, they bathe together. Afterward, they might have sex. They might lounge naked on the grass together, reading. Yen has gotten the hang of Tower and they imagine other players for their table to make the game more interesting. Every now and then, she tries a heavily diluted shot of White Gull. They share memories. Eskel makes up images in his head and invites Yen to read his mind, a kind of bedtime story.

At night, they lay their open bedrolls side by side and hold each other until they sleep.

\- - -

They’re lying naked together. Yen has been quieter than usual tonight, but Eskel doesn’t press her. He knows how it is when the past suddenly makes itself felt—a weight of loss and failure. Only thing to do is keep moving and breathing until it passes. 

“Eskel? I’d like to make a request.”

He rolls over, props himself up on his elbow, and looks down at her. He loves the way her hair spreads around her head on the grass. “Mm?”

Yen’s eyes are sad. She lifts her palms to his face, laying her hands against his cheeks, and tries to smile. “Kiss me as if you love me.”

He pulls his head free of her hands. “Dunno about that, Yen.”

“Why not?”

He’s thought about this. He would rather keep it to himself, but she’ll read his mind anyway. Eskel lowers his head to stare into her eyes. He wants her to see his scar. “What we have is good, Yen. It’s working because we know what it is, and accept it.” He exhales. “I’m not Geralt.”

“I know that. Don’t you think I know that? I don’t want you to be him, Eskel, I want… to believe that this is something beautiful. That we found one another at the end of the world and salvaged a small mercy from it. Can we pretend? For a little while?”

This is not the Yen who struck fear and resentment in the hearts of men. It isn’t even the Yen who’s whispered requests that make his blood run a little faster. Her voice is smaller, vulnerable. He’s in the habit of granting Yen’s requests. This Yen—she wants something that he’s not sure he can give. He doesn’t know if it would be a mercy at all. 

Eskel can feel her tremble, just slightly. That decides it for him. He brushes his thumb across her cheek. Yen gives him a grateful smile. 

He tries to remember the way that Geralt looked at her. The light that glowed through him when she walked by, even when she was hurling commands or barely veiled insults. 

Eskel can’t be Geralt. But like the fencing student copying his teacher’s movements until they become his own, Eskel can map Geralt’s love. This is how he looked at her—Eskel lets some mimicry of that into his eyes. This is how Geralt turned toward her, on that night ages and worlds ago in Kaer Morhen—Eskel lowers his body onto her body, cups the face with that unfolding tender smile as if she has been his meaning all along. He reaches for the light that shone through Geralt at the sight of her and kisses her as if it’s his, too.

They have never been this gentle with each other. The light Eskel borrowed glows inside him and he gives it back to her, takes her breath as she gasps into his shoulder and her nails as they trace down his back, not clawing but gliding, the grip of her legs trying to pull him deeper, the nip of her teeth on his shoulder, the heat of her breasts crushing against him, every pull and push bringing the light closer and brighter and almost ready to taste so that he needs to wrap his fingers in her raven-dark hair and pass what he tastes to the lips that press and open against his, until she tastes it too, and then they’re tangled in it and pulling each other toward the same destination, frantic now, straining to get there and panting and desperate until they take each other there, together. 

They lie side by side. Eskel’s breathing hard. Yen’s eyes are closed. She’s smiling. 

She looks different, somehow. Eskel shifts onto his side for a better view. There’s something new in her face. He tilts toward her and kisses the corner of her mouth, where he sees it most. 

Her mouth curves into a smile. “You don’t need to pretend any more, Eskel.”

He kisses her again. “I’m not.”

\- - -

By the river to the north, half a mile from the monoliths, the snow has reached the tops of the trees.


	3. Lullabies

Yennefer says it suddenly, as if she’s reading aloud from the book in her lap: “I never buried them.”

Eskel’s needle pauses. He's mending a seam in his trousers, which have ripped for the third time. “No need,” he says. “Snow did a better job than you could’ve.”

When she doesn’t answer right away, Eskel looks up. Yen is sitting in the grass with her back propped against the rocks. The black velvet of her top has started to fray. She’s pressed her lips together into an unforgiving line. 

Eskel rests his hands in his lap. “You’re looking backward, Yen. Nothing there to see.”

“What else is there to look at?”

This meadow, he thinks. The bean plants, the bath tub, the little tufts of herbs against the rock. Our things spilling together into cozy little piles. This meadow is all that’s left, so look at it. But even if he can see the words rippling like water in his mind, he can’t catch hold of them. “Aw, Yen,” he says instead, “now I’m not pretty enough for you?”

Yen knows to look at him and smile, even if there’s distance in her violet eyes. “Are you pretty enough to grant me amnesia?”

“Sure. With the help of a little White Gull.”

Yen closes the book in her lap and tucks it into the little nook just within the cave. “I’ve a better idea. One that successfully avoids the abuse of internal organs.” She takes a breath. “I’d like us to hold a funeral.”

Eskel rolls the needle and thread into their designated pouch, folds the half-mended trousers, and puts them aside. “A funeral. Huh. I could see if this was fresh, Yen, but... they’ve been gone for months.”

“In body and in fact, yes.” Yen folds her arms over her chest. “Eskel, do you ever pause to marvel at the oddity of our arrangement?”

_Arrangement._ The word makes him shift as if the ground’s become uncomfortable. “No. Little busy figuring out how to keep the potatoes going a few more years.”

“A true agricultural marvel.” Yen’s voice outlines a sharp edge, bordering on sarcasm. “It also happens to be a convenient distraction from certain facts. Such as: we’d be strangers to one another, if not for Geralt. Don’t you feel his presence…” She waves her arm in an arc. “...lingering in this place, somehow?”

“Geralt’s _gone_ ,” Eskel grates. “He’s _been_ gone. All of that’s in your head. Isn’t it time you let ‘im go?”

Yen drops her hands to her hips and instinctively, Eskel tenses. He’s starting to know her now, and whatever she says next will not be gentle. “Certainly,” she says, her voice like a silken sleeve concealing a knife. “When you stop comparing yourself to him. When you stop thinking _they fucked for thirty years_ and wondering if you’re as skilled, as attentive as he was--”

“Stop.” Eskel’s on his feet. His body does the thinking for him and it moves witcher-fast. “Stop fucking talking, Yen.”

Yen’s glaring at him, not a trace of fear in her flashing eyes. She’s not his Yen any more, the woman who curves the petite slip of her body against his hips and chest at night. She’s Yennefer, the sorceress who can stabilize a Trial-melted body for hours and sustain a dome strong enough to repel the Wild Hunt, Yennefer who challenges djinns. Geralt’s Yennefer, fierce and fated.

She’s Yennefer who knows too much because, yes, Eskel has thought these things. He’s held Yennefer knowing he’s not the first witcher to hold her, that Geralt drew all of those whimpers, moans, commands from her first. He’s wondered if she looks into Eskel’s yellow eyes hoping to see Geralt’s. And it isn’t right. Yen has had a Geralt but Eskel has never had a Yennefer. There’s been no one like her and nothing like this for him, and he has to share it with a dead man.

He wants to ask her why she’s ruining this. There are rules for this last doomed patch of earth, and he thought they were obvious: don’t look backward, seize everything that’s left, don’t second-guess it because a hundred paces north, the world has ended.

All Eskel can manage is: “What are you doing?”

Yennefer inhales, her shoulders going back, her chest inflating as if she’s about to savage him-- but instead, she sighs. It’s a long exhale that makes her shoulders droop and dims her flashing eyes. “I’m trying to live, Eskel. To remain awake and fully alive in this moment. But I am too haunted by the dead. By what we have both lost.” She searches for his eyes now and holds Eskel in her gaze. “Will you help me put them to rest?”

Nobody gets put to rest, Eskel hears himself thinking. Like Deirdre. They come, they cut you, and they leave, or you leave them. You carry the scars and keep moving forward. There’s nothing else.

Yennefer’s face warps. Her lip pulls back in pain.

“Don’t read my mind,” Eskel says. “Not right now.”

“If you spoke your mind, I wouldn’t have to.”

He doesn’t want to do this. 

“Eskel. Please.” The way she says his name makes him twitch, softens him in places that he wants to keep armored. Her voice lowers. “You loved him, too.”

Eskel turns away. 

There’s a sprig of moleyarrow in the southern corner of the meadow. He planted it in the early weeks of this place, when only a few mages, augurers, and half-mad oracles knew what was coming. The thought was potion preparation, but he’s never once harvested the petals. They’re bright yellow now, almost luminous, even as his vision blurs.

Her footsteps approach in the grass. The scent of her rises, and she’s wrapping her arms around him from behind. He’s getting leaner-- her fingers find the grooves of his ribs under his shirt. 

“I’m not leaving you,” Yen breathes in a whisper that only a witcher can hear. “I’m here, Eskel, where I shall remain. I have no wish to join the dead.”

There. There’s the fear finding its name and becoming revealed. Eskel used to think about it, before Yen came. He’d picture the meadow, a patch of green in a valley turned to ice, and a single set of footprints vanishing into the snow. Freezing-- supposed to be an easy way to die. Certainly quieter than a typical witcher’s death.

Yen’s arms enclose him more tightly. Eskel lays his hands on top of hers. “We’re both staying,” he says, his voice a shade rougher than usual. “‘Sides, I’m responsible for you now.”

“Responsible? For me?” Yen’s laugh vibrates against him. “Shall I begin addressing you as Papa?”

“Hm. If you change it to ‘Daddy’...”

They chuckle together.

Eskel lightly squeezes her hands. “Naw. I mean… now we’re in this contract together. I gotta do my share of the work for my share of the coin.”

“Mm,” Yen says against his back. “You know, with all of this time on our hands, have you considered turning to poetry? I sense a new genre in the making-- witcher verse. Distinguishing features include monosyllables, the use of contracts and griffin parts as metaphors, and frequent wordless grunting.”

Eskel takes one of her hands in his grip and raises it to his lips. “You’re a pain in my ass, you know that?” He kisses the back of her hand. 

“Mm, and despite your reluctance to experiment in that arena…”

“Yeah, okay, enough of that. So what you wanna do about this funeral thing. Before I change my mind.”

Yen gives him a last squeeze before releasing him. Eskel turns when her footsteps recede and he watches her rummage inside one of her lesser-used trunks, tucked into a back corner of their cave. She’s pawing at clattering, rustling objects for a few moments, and then she’s returning to him with two glistening objects dangling from her hand. They’re wolf’s head medallions on their silver chains.

“I want to bury these,” Yennefer says. “His. And-- Vesemir’s-- Ciri’s.” 

She’s watching him. Eskel hesitates, but not for long. “How did you get these? You tracked him down in the bog?”

“No. A godling tracked _me_ down after considerable effort on his part. He claims that Geralt did him a great favor once, and he felt obligated.”

“Mm, sounds like Geralt. Always soft for the intelligent ones.” Eskel sighs. He’s conscious of the weight of his own medallion around his neck. He never takes it off, still, even though it jumps around whenever he gets too close to the monoliths. “Medallions. Good. We hardly ever got ‘em back at Kaer Morhen, when someone fell on the Path.”

“Was…” Yen drops the wolf heads into her other palm. “What was the custom in Kaer Morhen? To honor the fallen. Ciri trained there, too. I think she’d like that-- to be honored as a witcher.”

“If we have the bodies, we burn ‘em or bury ‘em.” By instinct, Eskel inclines his head toward the southeastern end of Kaer Morhen. It’s invisible behind the crest of Hela’s Peak and its mantle of snow. “Like Vesemir. Or Leo. If we don’t, we gather what we’ve got-- medallions, swords, somethin’ the guy made. Then we bury ‘im on Signal Hill.”

“Signal Hill, you say. Is that far?”

“Wouldn’t recommend the walk. Or the digging.”

“Indeed. Well, it need not be Signal Hill, but I should like to bury these. Is there a suitable place?”

Eskel looks at the silver wolf heads snarling in Yennefer’s palm. He still hates this but he can see what she needs from it. This meadow is crowded with ghosts. Time they reserved it for the living.

“Geralt and I killed a forktail not too far from here,” Eskel says. “Got that spinal fluid for the Trial. We could bury ‘em there, in the forktail’s cave. Might not’ve filled up with snow.”

“In the lair of a vanquished beast.” Yen nods. “Yes, he’d approve.” She appraises him, and a hint of a smirk tilts the corners of her mouth. “How’s your Quen? You’ve not practiced in a while.” 

Eskel smirks. “I’ll manage.”

“Very well. Let us prepare, then.”

Yen takes decisive steps toward her trunks, leaving him to stand awkwardly alone because he has no idea what ‘prepare’ means, exactly. What rite will they use? She doesn’t have a shred of religion in her, and if he turns his eyes up to the stars sometimes as if they can hear what he’s thinking, that’s not something he needs to share. They’re making this up as they go along.

An idea appears to fill the empty space where he’s imagining their funeral. Hm. They’re making it up, but maybe it will be worth the time and the trek anyway.

\- - -

Sixteen years ago, the fateful Winter of Lambert’s Whining seemed like the worst winter imaginable. Snow piled into the moat, the river disappeared under the drifts, and come Belleteyn, their food stores had run out except for hard tack and Vesemir’s supply of wyvern jerky. 

But this.

Outside of their meadow, the valley has become its own graveyard. Snow has engulfed the mountains in an annihilating flood, trees, peaks, and ridges all swallowed by the white tide. The few mountain faces still visible have had their crags erased into identical planes of ice. Eskel grew up here, he should know the name of every peak. Standing within the cover of Yennefer’s shield, though, he can’t imagine the world where humans existed, saw granite snow-capped peaks, and called them the Blue Mountains. There’s nothing here on this lifeless plane except the White Frost. 

“Gods,” Yennefer murmurs. 

“Wonder if they’re frozen, too.”

“Hm?”

“The gods. Think Melitele’s kicking her feet up by a fire?”

She smiles thinly and doesn’t look at him.

They have to hunt around for the cave mouth. It’s almost completely blocked by snow, and Yen’s magic digs out a small mountain before she’s made an entrance wide enough to enter. The snow drift enters the cave for several feet but then the path beyond is unblocked. The air smells of dirt, dead moss, and desiccated flesh. 

Yen murmurs a few words, and a glowing ball of light illuminates the darkness of the cave. It’s craggy, stale. A reptile’s lair. “Charming.” 

“‘Specially the mummified forktail in the back. We can find a place halfway there. What about…” Eskel indicates a pocket where the walls of the cave form a rough alcove. “This good enough?”

“It will do.”

Yen puts her pack down and lays a blanket across the earthen floor. They sit down on it and Eskel tries not to look as foolish as he feels. They might be having a picnic, here in this frozen cavern half-buried by snow. He signs another Quen around the two of them to keep the cold at bay.

Yen takes a breath that shivers in her throat. Her hand moves slowly as she takes Eskel’s spade from her pack and begins to dig. The cave dirt is frozen, but after Eskel hits it with the Igni sign, she’s able to dig two small, shallow holes without much trouble.

She lays one of the two witcher medallions on top of her pack, the other sitting in her palm. She’s staring at it. 

“This was Ciri’s,” Yen murmurs.

They sit in silence.

Then the cave echoes with a sound that Eskel never expected to hear. Yen is singing a lullaby.

_Hush, my girl, my daughter,  
My darling ugly one  
The battle now is over  
Our kingdom come undone  
The snows come gently falling  
In drifts three fathoms deep  
And nightbirds come a-calling  
To lay you down to sleep._

_Shush, beloved darling,  
The maddened world has stilled  
The dawn refuses rising,  
Its promise unfulfilled  
But you, my precious darling,  
Flow now down ghostly streams--  
Go, my girl, my darling,  
And lay you down to dream._

Yen’s voice warbles. The song turns to breath.

“I never sang to her,” Yen murmurs in the silence. 

Eskel says nothing. He never heard lullabies in Kaer Morhen except once. He’d been seeing to his horse in the courtyard when a rasp of melody sounded from an upstairs window: Geralt singing Ciri to sleep. 

That little ashen-haired girl had changed everyone around her. When he talked to her, Vesemir turned from taskmaster to doting grandfather. Lambert teased her, of course, but even then he hid razor edges that he happily inflicted on everyone else. Even Eskel caught himself softening, taking time away from Vesemir’s eternal list of chores to help her fight imaginary griffins or fix whatever she’d splintered, broken, or ripped. And Geralt-- after Ciri, Geralt became a different man, one who knew how to laugh with his whole body, how to love without pretending he couldn’t. 

Next to him, Yen shivers. Eskel wraps an arm around her shoulders and she leans into him. Ciri was not his child. This isn’t his grief, but he can hold it with her. So he holds her. 

Eskel has to cast Quen a second time before Yen sits upright, rubbing her face with a gloved hand. “Good-bye, Ciri. My daughter. My child.” Her voice shudders. She lays the medallion in one of the holes and smooths the dirt over it, until the last trace of silver is gone. 

Eskel is still staring at the covered hole when he feels her turning his hand over, palm-up. She drops the weight of the other medallion in his palm and closes his fingers over it. “Geralt’s.”

Geralt. A heavy waiting presence shifts inside him. Eskel feels its approach like the charge of a fiend’s hooves or the whoosh of an archgriffin’s wings.

“Yen… I don’t know if…”

Yennefer closes her hand around the hand that holds the medallion. “You can,” she says. He didn’t know her voice could be so gentle. 

He can. Alright. 

Eskel breathes and tries to find solid ground. He has been moving forward for months but after a certain point, moving forward becomes running away. Now he’s standing in place, waiting for this coming thing to catch up with him and face him, fully, at last.

Yennefer’s hand on his knee, squeezing, reassuring. 

Eskel takes a deep breath. Pressure is rising to a crest inside him. He squeezes Yen’s hand back, lets his last defenses fall, and here it comes: Geralt is dead, his brother is dead. It shatters the cage in which he’s contained it as just another fact. A fragile balance in him fractures and splits and with a sudden thrust the truth impales him, makes his hand with the medallion grab at his chest as if he can staunch the wound there but the wound doesn’t stop at the flesh; it shivers all the way down to the hard rock of his being, where the core of him has broken.

Geralt. The White ploughing Wolf who should be here to sip Eskel’s White Gull and complain that he always uses too little arenaria, but he’s not, and should be holding Yennefer, but he isn’t. Geralt who isn’t here to laugh about how Eskel got that scar from the water hag when they were seventeen because he lost his belt and kept tangling himself in his sagging trousers. Geralt who’s eaten every meal of his childhood with him, beaten him bloody in practice, matched his own screams during the Trials, fallen into his arms every winter they found each other again in an embrace that said: _you’re still here_. But Geralt isn’t here anymore. 

“Eskel.” Yen’s voice, urgent in his ear. She’s breaking, too. “Show me, Eskel. Please. Let me help you.”

He can’t stop the flood anyway. Each memory burns as its own loss and Eskel and Geralt shared so many, a childhood followed by a lifetime of winters. So he lets them come. Geralt with red hair who convinces Eskel to raid the kitchen for sweet rolls, except there are none and they both get whipped for their trouble. Geralt needlessly bruising himself on the Gauntlet because he shows off too much. Geralt as a drunk teenager carrying another drunk boy on his shoulders, and the two of them charging another pair of young witchers. Everyone collapses on the stones and lies there laughing, they’re not sure they can stand. Geralt the eight-year-old who hears Eskel crying himself to sleep and gives him a child’s kindness of “It’s okay, I cry too.” Geralt the seventy-six-year-old who sits side by side with Eskel in silence after everyone else has gone to bed because they need no words to hear each other, to know that they are witnessed and understood. Their lives contain one another; mind and heart, they’re already laid bare.

Something’s wet on his arm. Yen is crying. She leans her head into his and he leans back and a century of memory unfolds between them. She bears witness to everything he has lost and miraculously, amidst the sharing and the witnessing, some of the pain starts to ebb. 

When the flood of memories slows, Yen raises her head, wipes at her face. Eskel breathes. Alive, still. 

He’s a little shaky as he stands, but his legs hold. He didn’t bring much from the meadow-- just sticks of half-burnt wood from last night’s fire. The burnt wood leaves a streak of black soot when he scrapes it against the cave wall. He scratches carefully, switching to another stick if the black mark becomes too faint. When his labor ends, there’s a wolf’s head scratched onto the rock-- a witcher’s sign that a brother has been here. 

Eskel kneels on the blanket next to Yen. Instinctively, their fingers intertwine. With his other hand, Eskel drops Geralt’s medallion into the hollow and covers it with dirt. 

“You were right, Yen.”

She doesn’t say anything. They gaze at the memorial they’ve built-- the little mounds of dirt in the cave recess, marked by a wolf’s head. 

Yennefer leans forward, touching her fingers to the cave floor. “Farewell, Ciri. Farewell… Geralt.”

Eskel lays his palm on the dirt next to hers. “Farewell, Ciri. See you, Wolf.” 

They walk back to the meadow in silence. Later that night, something has changed between them. They’re quiet, almost shy: Eskel pretends to read as Yen bathes and Yen turns her back to him as she changes into her bedclothes. After they arrange their bedrolls, they lie down quietly in silence for a few minutes before they realize they are both stealing glances at each other.

“Yen.” Eskel lays his hand on her arm. “It was a good idea, today. Thank you.”

Yennefer gives him something between a smile and a mild smirk. “Ahhh. Now you admit that I know what I’m about?”

“Don’t let it go to your head.” 

“Of course not. We’re simply acknowledging the wisdom of following my advice. I trust you’ll remember to do so in the future.”

“Sure will.”

Yen inhales deeply. “I feel… freer now. Do you not, as well?”

“Yeah.” He isn’t sure what this is. Some of it is emotional exhaustion, some of it relief. This unclenching in his abdomen-- could be. It could be. “Yeah, guess I do.”

“Perhaps…” She quirks her lips in consideration. “Perhaps it’s not possible to build a future until one concludes mourning the past.”

“Mm. Thinkin’ about the future? Should we build a cabin there--” He points vaguely north-- “--and a retirement home there?” --and now south.

She taps him on the forehead playfully. “Now now. I prefer when I see your thoughts and not the other way around. Speaking of which... I hope you don’t mind, I couldn’t help but overhear an interesting fact.”

“Yeah? Little bird tell you somethin’ juicy?”

“Mhm. No one’s ever sung you to sleep.”

“Ha! Believe me, that was a kindness. You don’t wanna hear Vesemir singing.”

“A dire threat indeed.” She pauses. “Do you know any lullabies, Eskel?”

Eskel tilts his head to look at her. “You want me to sing to you?”

“Yes.” She’s grinning. He can’t tell if this is a joke. “You heard my singing voice. This would right the scales, so to speak. Come, I’m sleepy and need a lullaby before bed. I’m sure you’ve a delightful baritone.”

Yen’s smile is only slightly mischievous. Eskel still isn’t sure what to make of these requests that are more like demands. They change the usual landscape of his consistent existence, give him something to do to please her. Alright, he might enjoy them.

“Dunno ‘bout lullabies, but... lemme see.” He settles a hand under his head, and she nestles into her usual spot against his shoulder. “A’right, think I got somethin’. But no complainin’ about my voice.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Yen murmurs into his chest. 

Eskel clears his throat and starts to sing. “De ole hen she cackled, she cackled in the loft. De next time she cackled, she cackled in de trough.” He can’t tell if she’s reading his mind, but in case she is, he tries to show her the faded remnants of a memory: warmth, kitchen smells, a woman’s voice...

Yennefer makes a sound. He doesn’t hear it over his own singing, but he feels her chest vibrate against his and now he wonders if he could love her, truly love her, with a little more time. 

Yen squeezes him. Eskel squeezes her back. They’re in their bedclothes, but they’re naked to each other now, more than they’ve ever been.

-

That night, Eskel dreams of Kaer Morhen. A portal has opened inside the keep. Death is coming. 

Eskel hefts his sword. He can’t win, but he’ll fight anyway. He always will.

-

He wakes in the morning, and something has changed.

Eskel flails toward consciousness. Yen isn’t next to him, there’s only cold air at his side like a shock against the skin. He tries to pull himself toward the waking world and manages to sit upright, blinking.

Yennefer’s in the meadow outside the cave. She’s waving her hands and chanting at one of the monoliths. Her voice startles him fully awake. It’s too high, edged with something like--fear? 

Eskel rolls to his feet. When he leaves the warmth of the bedroll, his skin prickles with goosebumps. Damn, it’s cold this morning--

It’s _cold_.

“Yen.” He runs the rest of the way to her. 

Yen turns toward him. Her face is a mask of desperation. “The spell. It’s waning.”

Eskel presses his hand against the monolith. His medallion jumps, but the movement isn’t violent, as it’s been for months. The reaction is noticeably weaker. “How? Do we need to recharge the monoliths?”

“I’ve been trying. Every spell I know that might remotely function. Nothing’s working.”

“Lemme try the Sign.”

“Eskel…”

He has to try. He has to keep fighting. 

Aard thunders through the air. Somehow, the sign feels weaker, too. His medallion twitches but the monolith shows no reaction.

“Yen? What’s happening?”

Yennefer looks at him. Her forehead smooths, and her mouth resolves itself into a neutral expression. She’s fighting to compose herself. That is the worst sign of all. 

“The White Frost is a magical phenomenon,” she says, her voice controlled. “It’s destroyed our world physically. Now, apparently, it’s destroying us magically as well. Chaos in the form of magic powers these monoliths, and chaos itself is under attack. I feel it.. decaying, withering away. If this continues… even the simplest spells won’t work.”

Eskel stares at the monolith. “Fucking piece of shit,” he spits but he knows it’s not the monolith, it’s not anything he can cut with steel or silver or bombs or Signs. It’s an enemy he can’t fight and yet it’s all around them, suffocating the skies, the mountains, the Continent itself. 

Somewhere above them, beyond the reach of the monoliths’ waning protection, a winter wind is roaring.


	4. The Last Contract

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost doubled the length of the fic with this last chapter. Sorry for the sudden change in length. I had a lot of feelings while writing this and I hope you have lots of feelings while reading it, too!

The valley of Kaer Morhen lies in sepulchral quiet. 

...until Yennefer clenches her first, and the trees explode. 

She’s breathing hard. Not from effort; the magic doesn’t tax her. If anything, it isn’t enough. She wants to rip the mountains from their roots and hurl them into the eternal blizzard. She wants to shove claws between the molecules of the clouds and tear them apart. 

And why shouldn’t she? What’s left to save?

The thought’s too bitter. After the afternoons they have spent crouched over potatoes, the dirt embedded in Eskel’s callouses, the soil Yen’s aerated to let the water drain. After the many mornings waking up in the arms of a man who has ceased to be a stranger. How could all of their efforts end in futility? How could it not have been enough?

Yennefer raises her hand again. Chaos rise with the slow obedience of a sickened dog, and that sharpens the savage urge in her to a blade edge. She uncoils her magic, and another dead pine tree explodes into splinters. 

When the booming echoes fade, there’s a sound behind her. A throat being cleared. 

“I musta missed something. We runnin’ out of firewood?”

Eskel’s deep voice is like water on coals. Yennefer exhales. “One can never overprepare.”

“I counted four thunderclaps on my way over.” Eskel’s footsteps crunch toward her in the snow. “Then you exploded three in a row. Didn’t take you for a lumberjack!”

“No time like the present to explore new careers.” Yennefer’s voice drips poison. “Considering.”

The air alters. He’s crossed into the protective dome of her shield, dropping his own Quen, and now he is a warm, solid presence pressed against her back, his only audible answer a low thrum. The other half of his response is the pressure of his lips along the side of her neck and gods, the way he emanates. The rest of magic is waning, but he... sparks. As if lightning once struck him, lit up his veins, and never left. 

“You’re compromising my efficiency, witcher.” Yennefer reaches behind her, finds the back of his head, scrapes her fingers against his scalp. “Do you know what happens to men who interfere with my wishes? Even those with such delicious emanations.”

“Got a few guesses.” His hands frame her waist. “Maybe I oughta keep interfering, find out.”

“Mm…” But she’s not in the mood. Yennefer drops her hand from his scalp to his wrist and grips the tendons there. He’s thinner now, the lean muscle of his profession giving way to sinew and bone. “I could use a break. The lumberjack guild demands fair working conditions. Gods damn it, it’s cold.”

Eskel moves to stand beside her, his arm around her shoulders, and he makes the sign for Quen. “Come back, then.”

“Yes,” Yennefer says. She lets him guide her back up the slope to their meadow. It’s not a long walk but the path they’ve beaten through the snow is uneven, and they need to pick every step as they walk. When they pass over the boundary where the snow ceases and their green meadow begins, she notices that the plants along the northern edge have begun to brown.

It is late morning, ostensibly. Eskel will want to practice his forms. Now that they’ve reached the meadow, she can see him glancing toward his swords. They’re sharpened and oiled as per his routine, a daily ritual that he has yet to abandon.

“Yen…” He hesitates. “You gonna hold it together?”

He should have hesitated longer. “I don’t appreciate your implication of dawning hysteria, Eskel.”

Eskel blinks. “I wasn’t sayin’ that?”

“Hence the implication.”

“Come on. I found you bombin’ the valley to hell and you’re acting like I’m the idiot for askin’ if you’re okay.”

“ _The_ idiot?” Yennefer narrowed her eyes. “Care to elaborate?”

Eskel raises his hands. “Know what, Yen. Forget it.” He turns from her and begins crossing the meadow, toward the cave. 

“Of course.” She’s raised her voice and its newfound barbs. “Let me not delay you from your practice. We’ve all kinds of monsters to fear-- icicles, snowflakes, avalanches--”

Eskel whirls around. “What do you want me to do, Yen?” he rumbles, his scars pulling his lip into a hideous snarl. “Want me to go tree-bombing with you? Knock down a few pines with Aard? Would that make you happy?”

“It would be better than this pretense that nothing has changed.”

“Nothing _has_ changed.”

Yen could throttle him. He’s too placid, even now with a bedrock harshness rising in his voice. “Look at this.” Quick strides take her to the northern edge of the meadow. She rips a browned leaf off a potato plant and storms back to thrust it close to Eskel’s face. He doesn’t flinch. “This spell, maintained by the monoliths-- it’s the only reason we’re not corpses yet. It’s been one week since the spell began to fail. One week, and the plants are already dying. And you say nothing’s changed?” Yen hurls the dead leaf at his feet. “How dare you, Eskel. How dare you dwell in your delusions? You’ve condemned me to reality alone.”

“ _You’re_ alone with reality?” Eskel steps into her space, his yellow viper eyes glaring down at her. He’s a large man, even now that his shirt has begun to hang on his frame. “You want reality, here it is. Forget the spell. How long’d you think the plants would last? Sooner or later, the soil gets exhausted. Or a blight comes along, wipes the whole crop out. Or the new seedlings don’t grow true. All the peasant country you ever rode through, hearin’ the people complain about hunger-- ever wonder why? ‘Cause soil runs dry. ‘Cause crops fail. And us here with our little patch of dirt…” He shrugs. “Ahhh. We were always tauntin’ the hourglass.”

“Stop it.” Yen’s voice crackles. His body is so solid and so close to her, she wants to-- she doesn’t know. Hold it, touch it, hurt it, this doomed body that she doesn’t know how to save. “I expected better of you than to give in so completely. Where’s your witcher’s courage? You coward!”

“Yen! Gods damn it.” Eskel is struggling not to touch her, too. “It’s got nothin’ to do with courage. Hell. How did you think this was gonna end?”

His voice eases into something like a plea. Yen doesn’t want that. She wants him to growl back, dig in his heels. They can rip into each other with their words and their bodies and afterward when they lie together in exhausted fulfillment, death will feel further away. Instead Eskel stares down at her with his wrinkling eyebrows and his questioning voice and Yen has to lower her head. 

“I wanted us to live,” she says. “That would have been enough. You… I saw you build that little garden for the seedlings that wouldn’t take. You wanted to save them. You devoted so much effort. Did you truly devote yourself to those seeds for nothing?”

“Not nothing.” His voice softens and his weight shifts, but he doesn’t move to touch her. “I did it so we’d have one more meal. One more night with a full belly.” He pauses. “Seemed worth fightin’ for.”

“I’m sorry, Eskel.” Yen crosses her arms over her chest. “It’s insufficient. I can’t accept that.”

“Hm.” The sound is half-grunt, half-laugh. “You always get what you want, don’t you, Yen.”

Silence falls between them, and she hears him thinking: _But not this time._

Yennefer wants to scream. She wants to melt the mountains into lava, she wants to split the river in its depthless ice. She wants to go wherever Ciri went and die in the same hopeless fight as her daughter. 

Then the scarred, viper-eyed man closes his arms around her, and the fury in Yen’s heart melts. He is not a stranger. Why does she have to know Eskel now, the twist in his lips after a wry observation, the softness he feels for starlight, the reason that he practices one particular form in the morning? She knows so many details that the Frost will destroy.

Yennefer buries her forehead against his chest and feels his cheek pressed to the top of her head. 

“You were supposed to be safe,” she murmurs. “A mercy.”

“Hey.” Eskel’s arms tighten around her. “Hey. Yen. Read me. Okay?”

Yen leans into him, body and mind. His mind has always felt earthy, and drifting into the space of his thoughts and memories is like wandering down a path in a forest she has walked many times. He’s cupping memories like water for her. She feels the offering and accepts it.

Kaer Morhen. Empty. The keep embeds memories into each of its stones and walking across its courtyard is like leafing through a historical chronicle, each stone a page dense with the past. Eskel heaves a bundle of supplies onto a black horse-- _Scorpion_ \-- and remembers endless training, fighting the Hunt, arriving in Kaer Morhen as a child, bewildered and overwhelmed, arriving again many years later as a young witcher back from his first year on the Path, flush with his victories and ready for rest. Always coming back through these gates, but now he’s leaving for the last time. He’s relieved and guilty for his relief. 

The meadow. Gratitude that such a place exists. Small satisfaction that he remembered what it could be good for. Labor and many busy hours as he plans the layout of the plants and then plants them, estimates the wood needed and chops and transports it, guesses at what he will need and how long he will need it and tries to get it before news of the apocalypse spreads. Guilt that he has spent his life killing monsters and can’t fight this one. 

Then, when his supplies are secured, when he’s killed Scorpion because the little meadow can’t sustain a horse and the snow has begun to fall: long days of emptiness. Eskel rises, meditates, practices, farms, reads, sleeps. Over and over and over. The snow gets deeper. He finds himself talking to the plants. The wind howls, the nights are dark. He starts imagining Vesemir and his advice, Lambert and his complaints, Geralt and his teasing, Ciri and her demands for explanations or stories, former clients and long-dead witchers he hasn’t thought of in forty years, he doesn’t even remember their names. The meadow becomes a city of the dead. Eskel takes supper, argues, falls asleep alongside ghosts. At night, he’ll allow himself only a swallow of White Gull because if he takes more than that, he’ll stare at the northern edge of the meadow where the grass becomes frost. He will hear the community of the dead calling to him and imagine a single set of footsteps vanishing into the snow.

Then she arrives, Yennefer, beautiful, infuriating, alive. He doesn’t know what he wants to do most: talk to her, touch her, or throttle her. He spends weeks figuring it out until one day, he notices that the ghosts are gone. Only she is real.

Eskel offers this vision of the meadow to her: what had been a prison and a necropolis, renewed into a world for the living.

Yen claws her fingers into Eskel’s back. The thinning fabric offers little protection and he sucks in breath as her fingernails groove into his skin. 

“How long were you alone?” They rarely talk about it, the time between the Wild Hunt’s attack and the day they came together.

“The potatoes came in twice,” Eskel says, which she can now translate to roughly four months.

“Ahh. At least I had a megascope. To see it all fade.”

Eskel squeezes her. His grip hasn’t long strength. She’s thankful after all for his continued training. “That hourglass, we’ve beat it for months,” he says. “We’ll beat it for as long as we can. We’re still in this contract together. A’right?”

“Alright,” Yen says, and does not add: for how much longer?

\- - - -

“Eskel?”

“Yeah, Yen?”

“Kindly go to sleep.”

“Heh. You first.”

“I would, if your thoughts did not incessantly disrupt my tranquility.”

“Mm-hm. You could stop listenin’ in.”

“I could. But then I would miss the entertainment of your maudlin late-night thoughts.”

“Maudlin? Thought it was kinda cheerful. I’ll be the first witcher to die in his bed. Or his bedroll. Same difference.”

“Let’s not jump to premature conclusions.”

“Why? See, this ain’t exactly fair. I can’t read _your_ mind.”

“Nor must you. You need only ask to learn all you wish.”

“A’right, I’ll bite. What’re you thinking, Yen?”

“I’m considering our options, regarding our ‘impending death’ dilemma.”

“Ah-huh. Come up with anything?”

“Several options, in fact. Firstly, via megascope, I could investigate the remaining places on the Continent where life may have survived. This seems suboptimal, considering the White Frost’s effect on magic. Any remaining enclaves would be as temporary as ours.”

“Ah-huh.”

“Secondly, your option. We carry on as normal until death comes from starvation or cold. I’m given to understand that hunger is an unpleasant death. Still, there’s a certain grim satisfaction to the idea. Death before surrender, honor, endurance, et cetera.”

“Mm-hm.”

“This takes us to the third option, the direct route, and the many tools available for such. We have both avoided it. Undoubtedly it will look more attractive as the snows encroach. So let us establish in advance: I’d like to avoid the Keira method. Painless poison, wine, perhaps a last passionate session of lovemaking-- it’s sickeningly romantic. I’d prefer to die with a modicum of dignity. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Mm.”

“There is a variant on the third option. It might even constitute a fourth option, if we indulge in glib optimism. Avallac’h and the other sorceresses departed for worlds unknown. The sage spent hundreds of years learning interplanar navigation-- I’ve far fewer. But theoretically, should we feel both daring and suicidal, I could open a portal that may in fact blunder into another world. It would be the equivalent of leaping blindfolded from a galloping horse through a cottage window, which may or may not be shuttered. Yet, there is a small chance… a very small chance… that we survive. What do you think, Eskel-- what’s your appetite for desperate suicidal ventures?”

“Eskel?”

“...Eskel?”

“Hmph. Good night, then... you exasperating boor.”

\- - - -

The world is burning. Heat lashes at Yennefer’s skin, where most of her dress has burned away, and the stench of ash, heated metal, and burning flesh chokes her. She can’t see it, though. The last thing she saw was the flash of magic from a Nilfgaardian mage before the world turned black.

She’s stumbling through the ashen dark. “Triss!” Yen screams. Her throat’s ragged. “Triss, can you hear me?”

People are screaming, men and women. Arrows whistle somewhere overhead. Yennefer forms a shield above her to block whatever might come.

“Triss!” Yen screams again. Something thuds overhead and her shield trembles. “Anyone? Is anyone there?”

Cutting through the chaos-sounds of men dying, arrows falling, flames roaring, her voice comes. Tissaia. _Yennefer. I’m here._

_Tissaia! Thank the gods. Where are you? I can’t see…_

_With Triss._

_Are you two alright?_

_No._

To her left, a horse shrieks. Yennefer tightens her shield, willing it to form the shape of a dome that she can feel as she can feel the movements of her hands in the dark. Nothing crashes into her. She stumbles to the right, away from the horse, and falls, her elbows ringing as they collide with the hard shell of armor. The massive armored form beneath her does not stir. She falls aside.

 _Nilfgaard_ , Yen projects. _Are they still advancing?_

There’s no response at first, and Yen’s heart catches.

 _Yes,_ Tissaia responds. _They have not stopped. Our forces have broken._

_Will we fall back?_

_We cannot._

Yennefer raises herself to her knees. She tries to hear them coming, the Nilfgaardians. The sound of their advance and the slaughter to come if Sodden falls. When. 

_Yennefer. We cannot surrender._

_I have no strength left, Tissaia. I can’t see._

_Then fight without strength and without sight._

_Everyone-- everyone is dead. Axel, Atlan, Vanielle..._

_You and I are still alive._

_Nilfgaard is too strong! How can we fight them?_

_Together, Yennefer. We will fight them together. Now stand!_

Yennefer staggers as she stands. The earth shakes underfoot and all she can do is strengthen her shield. Fires and screams swirl in the darkness that surrounds her. She’s standing now, her magic a wounded animal that still bares its teeth. Tissaia’s voice compels her. It’s a sound from beyond the battle, to a tower on the sea…

 _There she is._ The voice smiles. _The sorceress I knew you would become. There you are. Come to me._

Yennefer curls her fingers. Magic swirls in her palm, feather-light and electric. It coalesces, fans into a shape with feathers and feet and a wild croaking cry as it takes flight.

“Guide me,” Yen whispers. “Take me to them.”

The crow-construct sounds its cry again, above her and to the right. Yennefer stumbles after the sound. She’ll follow it through the dark as the arrows fall and men and horses die around her. Tissaia is somewhere on the other side of hell and limping, bleeding, blind, Yen will find her…

The crow calls, and the sounds of the battle fade. Yen’s boots thud against a stone surface now and the smells of ash and metal are gone. The air’s turned cold.

She comes to a halt, blindly turning her head. What is this place?

“Tissaia?” Her voice echoes. This place-- it sounds large, empty, made of stone…

A choked voice: “Yen?” She recognizes it.

“Eskel? Where are you? Keep speaking…”

“Yen. Don’t stop for me, he’s…”

Yennefer strains to hear. Eskel’s voice comes from somewhere at her feet and she drops to a crouch, patting the ground blindly until she finds his familiar bulk, this time in the armor he hasn’t worn in weeks. He’s curled into himself, gasping for breath. His lungs gurgle. One of her hands is enveloped by a strong, warm grip. 

“Who?” Yen asks.

Eskel opens his mind to her, a trivial shift when they are already sharing dreams, and through his eyes she sees the impossibly tall figure on the other side of Kaer Morhen’s inner courtyard. The mage wears armor of blackened steel and he has no eyes, only pits of blackness where eyes should be. He wears Caranthir’s shape. It does not fool Yennefer.

The specter tilts its head. With predatory steps, it crosses the courtyard stones. 

“Yen,” Eskel chokes. “Run.”

“No.” Yen holds onto Eskel’s hand so she can see Caranthir coming. She raises a hand and the shield that had deflected volley after volley of arrows at the Battle of Sodden materializes.

The specter lowers its heavy iron staff. With one swing, it shatters Yen’s shield.

“Yen!”

Yennefer tightens her grip on Eskel’s hand. She snarls in the phantom’s direction: “Fuck! Off!”

She touches her free hand to her obsidian star. An arc of lightning blisters across the air and engulfs Caranthir in a pillar of devouring light. It would be blinding if she weren’t already blind. Eskel knows to turn his head. 

When the lightning dissipates, Caranthir, towering, implacable, takes another step toward them. His black armor smokes but suffers no other damage.

“Yen-- _please_ \--”

Yen curls her body over Eskel. She has nothing left to protect him. 

Death lifts its iron staff above their heads. For a moment, the killing stroke lingers mid-air. She hears a crow caw somewhere behind them-- and the air booms, the sound of a portal opening--

The staff comes down. 

They both jolt awake in the cave. Eskel chokes and clutches at his uninjured chest. Yen kneels with her forehead to the ground, fingers curling around her unbroken skull, her intact eyes. 

When they regain their breath, there is nothing to say. They press their still-living bodies together and hold each other.

\- - - -

In the morning, Eskel practices his forms. He is solid like that. Still, Yen has learned to see the cracks in his calm. She knows the rhythm of his body, catches when he turns too soon, too violently, at an angle that would leave him off-balance if he faced an actual wyvern. He seems to know it, too. His usual expression is focused, drawn with intention. Now his lip curls into an inaudible snarl after a pirouette, he stalks back to the reset position with tension locking his joints.

Yennefer doesn’t feel guilty about stealing glances at him during her work with the megascope. Thoroughness compelled her to pursue this first option, though she already guessed what she’d find: death everywhere, a vast and sprawling blanket of annihilation. Everywhere she’s looked, even in the enclaves that she once considered strongholds, the White Frost has won. There is no protected place. Unlike the still, white desert in the megascope, Eskel whirls, stalks, moves. He is a living thing. 

Yen’s heart shudders. She jerks her head to center herself.

Perhaps Eskel senses it with his blasted witcher senses. He slides his silver sword into its sheath, fluid and thoughtlessly graceful. “Yen. Hey. Can I ask you somethin’?”

“About last night?” 

“Hn.” It’s the grunt he makes to acknowledge that she’s read his mind and the conversation can continue without needless explanation. Yen suspects that he enjoys the shortcut-- sometimes putting thoughts into words feels like a physical effort for him. “You were in my dream. How?”

“Dream-melding.” Yennefer trains her gaze on the silvery image suspended between the megascope’s crystals. “A kind of automatic mind-reading, if you will, done subconsciously. I’ve experienced it…” She seems him as if he’s there: Geralt’s sleeping form. She grimaces. “...before. A mage’s mind may… open to another she trusts, in close contact. I was in the midst of my own dream when I must have slipped into yours.”

“I remember.” 

Eskel calls up an image. It’s Yennefer, only she can barely recognize herself. She’s a mangled creature, limping, smeared with ash, her eyes a mass of blood. 

“What were you dreaming?” His voice is impossibly gentle. 

“The Battle of Sodden.”

He pauses in respect. His thoughts are empty of images and words.

“We gotta have happier conversations before bed.” Eskel smiles. “Need better dreams. From now on, only kittens and unicorns, a’right?”

“Dangerous move, Eskel. You’ve found my weakness.” Yen knows that her smile is far too wide for the conversation and moves on. “I’m not so sure such pleasant diversions will prevent the nightmares. You’ve had the same one before. Many times.”

“Most nights. But… was worse this time. ‘Cause you were there.”

“Unintentionally.”

Yen can hear all of the responses he thinks to make. He starts by deflecting: _don’t be._ This isn’t honest, so he moves to the opposite extreme: _damn right. I told you to run._ And the unfairness of that response morphs into ambivalent resignation. “Nothin’ we could do.”

Yennefer waves the silver mirage of the megascope away. “There may yet be, Eskel. Before our dear friend Caranthir slew us both, do you happen to remember any peculiar sounds?”

Eskel shrugs. “Didn’t shit my trousers. Was my main worry.”

Yen rolls her eyes. “I mean the crow, you charming buffoon. Or the portal.”

“Portal.” Eskel tilts his head. “Hmph. Kinda, yeah. Like a whoosh, right? Thought I hallucinated that. It didn’t make any sense.” 

“Your sanity’s safe for now. I heard it, too. It may be an-- omen, perhaps. A subconscious sign that there’s a portal we can open in Kaer Morhen.” Yen fills her chest with air. “A portal that may take us beyond this world.”

“Like you were sayin’ the other night. What was it-- jumpin’ off a horse mid-gallop while blindfolded?”

Her lips quirk involuntarily. “Through a potentially shuttered cottage window, yes. You were listening after all?”

“‘Sure. Thought you knew that?”

“You were so convincing, I didn’t read you.” Yennefer tilts her head back. “My. Still so full of surprises.” 

They grin at each other.

“Eskel.” Her smile tightens. “I’m about to ask you a favor, and I’d like you not to question my judgment.”

Eskel’s predictable, and so is she. He crosses his arms over his chest. She turns at an angle so that her shoulder faces him. “This should be good. What do you need, Yen.”

Yen gazes up at the mountains over their heads. The snow is just visible. “Do you have any Black Gull?”

“ _Black_ Gull. You know what you’re askin’ for?”

“Yes,” Yen says, choosing not to elaborate.

“Ah-huh,” Eskel says, choosing not to question. “You won’t take more than half a shot of White Gull diluted in water. But you know Black Gull’s stronger.”

“I’m aware. I promise not to stumble about singing vulgar jigs. It’s for magical purposes. Can you make it?”

Yen chooses not to read his mind at this moment. She hardly needs to; his questions and doubts play across his face in the drawing together of his eyebrows, the tightness of the tendons in his neck. 

“Gimme half an hour,” Eskel says finally. 

“Excellent. I shall need until tonight to prepare the ritual, anyway.”

“Ritual?”

“Yes. Do you recall what I said when you inquired about my reading? Aside from my brief infatuation with the historical romance genre.”

“Yeah. Said you were studyin’ solutions.”

“This is one of them. Escape, as Avallac’h and the Lodge did. I thought we had more time, but we must take the most expedient means, with or without ideal preparation. I will say this only because we agreed to be honest with each other, Eskel. Imagine a soldier brought in from battle, badly wounded and in need of surgery. I am a first-year Oxenfurt student using outdated anatomical diagrams and armed with a butterknife.”

“Wow, Yen. You’re makin’ me more optmistic by the minute. Keep talkin’, and I’ll need that Black Gull, too.”

“I owe you a realistic assessment of the situation. If you understand, you can help.” She inhales deeply. “Our first step is to find weak points, tears in the fabric that holds our world together. Openings occur naturally, sometimes, significant enough that creatures may pass from one world to another-- as we saw in the Conjunction of the Spheres. If we can find a weak point, or better yet, a natural opening, we can follow it… elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere.” Eskel rolls the word in his mouth. “They friendly out there?”

“In the best case scenario, we shall find out.”

The day passes quickly in furious study. Yennefer busies herself with the dismantling of the megascope and the preparation of her spell components. She’s exercised economy with her ingredients, knowing that many of them cannot be replaced: the harpy’s talons, the alchemist powder, wraith essence. This ritual will exhaust the last of her powdered obsidian. Tissaia’s voice floats through the years from Aretuza, demanding that the girls maintain the supply of their components above sleeping and eating. _A mage plans for decades, not for days,_ she’d say. Well, Tissaia, Yen thinks as she lays her components in the meadow grass, you may rest easily. We surely do not have decades.

The potion that Eskel brings her reeks of mandrake and the peculiarly acrid smell of mutagens. The thought of drinking it makes her throat close and she holds the bottle away from herself as she sets it in the grass. 

“And that’s the diluted version.” Eskel drops to a crouch next to her. His viper eyes trace over the bundles of spell components. “What can I do?”

“You can observe at a respectful distance,” Yennefer says. “If I have trouble returning, you may administer this.” She hands him a small vial full of a thick, yellow liquid that clings to the inside of the glass like oil. 

“Trouble returning?” Eskel closes his fingers around the vial and meets Yennefer’s eyes. “Care to put that in practical terms? ‘Fraid you’re talkin’ to a simple witcher, Yen.”

“I’d hardly squander my attentions on a simpleton, Eskel. Don’t insult us both.” Yennefer waves her arm as if to swat his self-deprecation aside. “What I mean is: my awareness shall go elsewhere. Don’t be alarmed if you see certain… physical reactions during the process. It is normal. But if I go still or you note signs of marked distress, apply the potion.”

“Sure.” He’s very good at feigning confidence. A touching effort, really.

“Excellent. We may begin. Eskel, some space, please?”

All is prepared. Yennefer touches her fingers to the powdered obsidian and the words of the Elder Speech warm her throat as she smears the powder across her forehead in the shape of an eye. Elemental forces lean in to listen. Her everyday consciousness gives way to the consciousness of magic, awake to the invisible world. Colors beyond human sight emerge, tasting of change and raw power, and now she can see the damage wrought by the White Frost. The thrumming, unseen chords that tether the physical world to the energy of formless creation: they’re decaying. It’s like a rot settling between the seams of reality. Already, this spell takes more effort than it should. She must move as quickly as she can.

Yennefer feels in front of her for the black feather. She cups it in her palms, fingers splayed. Obediently, magic moves through her and then the feather is a raven that perches in her hands. It spreads its midnight wings and croaks. With a quick bob of its tail feathers, it launches into the air and takes flight. 

_Won’t it freeze to death?_ Eskel thinks. He doesn’t mean to project the thought; it beams in the subtle reality that Yennefer has entered. 

_No,_ Yennefer projects back. Eskel starts. _It’s magic._

Yennefer shuts her eyes and opens the raven’s eyes. The lifeless mountains stretch below her for miles. From summit to valley, the earth is enveloped in white. 

Below, the Yennefer that is not a raven reaches for the Black Gull. She’s disconnected from her body, but the wretched bite of the potion is nearly enough to ground her again. Somehow she swallows the potion down. 

She is a raven again. She’s plunging down into the valley, and the appearance of snow and ice ripples. They are no longer solid masses that define space-- they are incidental, accidental, she can flick them away as one wipes water droplets off glass. Other worlds shimmer behind them. Some glimmer like distant stars behind the frozen gnarls of the river. Some beat like a lover’s heart within a beloved chest, close enough to feel but separated by a distance warm and close as skin. 

Yennefer-Raven’s claws open. She scrapes against the fabric of matter, feeling seams of solidity that hold firm to seal air and time together. But there are holes somewhere. She can feel the winds of other worlds, drafts through windows that are not fully closed. 

There-- one of her claws catches at the foot of a mountain where a tunnel plunges into its roots. She looks into the tunnel, beyond it, beneath. The ether here boils, something magmatic and angry below the surface. Whatever world traces a doorway here, it will not serve them. She flies on. An alien breath catches under her wing, and when she turns to look down through their reality into another, there is nothing but sky, a sphere of unbroken clouds-- when the clouds break, the water falls and falls in an endless loop, tracing an eternal circle around the rim of a world that is all air and sky-- They would fall forever. This world will not do, either. Yennefer-Raven flies onward.

Pockets of other dimensions riddle the mountains, and Yennefer-Raven tastes them on her claws. A world as cold as theirs, frozen long ago by the White Frost. A world of dark water, pitch-black except for the soft glow of creatures glowing electric blue in the deep. A world of echoes that is all sound and no solidity and creatures there swim in soundwaves alone. No, and no, and no. They won’t survive there.

Perhaps it is instinct that pulls her, but it feels more like dread. Yennefer-Raven dives toward the frost-covered towers that were once Kaer Morhen. The roofs and wooden structures are all collapsed. The keep’s road to ruin is complete.

Beneath the surface of air and being, though, there’s a clamor. The raven flies closer. Here, in the inner courtyard-- where the crow had cawed in a human dream-- 

She notches a claw against the fabric of reality, pulls. 

Noise spills from the tear she’s made. There’s a world on the other side of the air and it is tumult, noise, stench, the noisy disorder of living things jostling, cursing, trading, the noise of machines and something as recognizable as wheels on streets and the age-old snarls of animals fighting for scraps, the stench of livestock, roasting meat, unwashed bodies, sewage… A city, she realizes with a shock of recognition-- it has been so long since she’s seen so many living creatures at once, a city pockmarked by otherworldly doors like the one that wants to open in the inner courtyard of Kaer Morhen, a city of doors…

A chill passes through Yennefer-Raven. For the first time during her flight, she feels cold. And then afraid.

Magic. She can see it like a rotting rope whose last fiber is about to snap. She took too long, she’s caught in the cold, and now the vibrant pulses of other worlds fade and she’s abandoned to this one where the heartbeat of the living world slows to a halt--

Yennefer coughs. She isn’t a raven. She’s a woman lying in the grass with Eskel holding her upper body and tilting a vial into her mouth.

“Ack.” Yennefer sits forward and tries to tell Eskel to go away, she’s fine, except she can’t stop coughing. Eskel kneels at her side, thumping her on the back. He thumps far too hard. 

_Stop that,_ she manages to project. 

“Sorry.” Eskel sits back on his heels. “Thought--”

Yennefer flaps a hand at him, covering her mouth with her other hand and coughing into her palm. He gets the hint.

When breath finally returns and the sickly-sweet taste of the grounding potion finally fades, Yennefer leans back on her palms. Eskel is watching her with his eyebrows slightly tilted, which is his tell that he’s concerned but holding it back. Likely he notes her gazing upward as she regains control of her breath, which is her tell that she’d prefer not to be pushed. How well they know each other now.

“In good news,” Yennefer says, “I’ve found a likely place for a portal, to a world that likely won’t kill us the instant we enter.”

“Yeah?” Eskel settles himself into a more comfortable position in the grass. “Another world. Hell. What’s it like? They have monsters there? Horses? Food other ‘an potatoes?”

“I don’t know. I saw…” Yennefer closes her eyes for a moment. So many worlds had flashed beneath her wings, her raven’s claws. The meadow no longer feels so solid. “A city, shaped like a great ring. There were beings of many races there-- humans, but also races that we’ve no notion of. All come to this city because it is a… crossroads, of sorts. Many portals open there. I wonder if it’s seen many refugees from the Frost.”

“A city.” Eskel’s lip curls in a very brief moment of disgust before settling again. “Great. Think I could get new trousers there? I’m sick of repairin’ mine.”

“I’ve offered to enchant a needle.”

“Ehhh.” Eskel dismisses the suggestion with a handwave. “Not a job for magic. Some things, you gotta do with your hands.”

“What a limiting notion.”

Eskel shrugs one shoulder. “So. You said that was the good news.”

“...yes. The other news…” Yennefer finds his eyes. She wants to make sure that he understands. “Magic is failing. Badly. The spell didn’t last nearly as long as it should have. I fear that if we wait too long, there won’t be enough magic left to open a portal. We’ll be stranded in this world.”

“So. Guess I’d better finish reading _Journey to the End of the World_ tonight. We’re movin’ out soon?”

“Yes…”

“Yen? What’s wrong?”

She runs her tongue over her bottom lip. “I don’t know how to open that kind of portal. If we wanted to be in Skellige this instant, why, we’d have no trouble. But to another world… I’ve never attempted such a spell before.”

Eskel’s staring at her. She needs to gather herself before she’s ready to meet his gaze and that bothers her. 

“So,” he says, “We’ve got a destination with no way to get there.”

“ _Yet._ A little more time to study, and… I should be able to make an attempt.”

“Yen. You said you were a first-year med student with a butterknife. This is… hm.”

“You can say it.”

“Feels like we’re a blind grandmother with a rolling pin.” 

“Thank you for your faith, my _dear_ friend. Perhaps you’d like to consult one of the fifteen books in my possession concerning the creation of interplanar portals? Would you care to make a contribution? Hm?”

Eskel lifts his hands in a peace offering. “Not critizin’ you. Just tryin’ to get a sense of our odds here. You really think you can get us to that place? The city with all the doors?”

Yennefer drops her gaze to her spell components. The black feather has curled into itself, nothing remaining but a drained husk. 

“I know that if we remain here, we will die.” There’s no pity in her tone, but no harshness either. Only the uncomforting justice of fact. “I know that magic is failing, and we will be unable to open portals within a matter of weeks. I know that I can make a semi-educated attempt. The rest-- I honestly cannot tell you, Eskel.”

They sit in silence. 

Eventually Eskel lays his palm on her knee. She covers his hand with hers, and they sit with only a light squeeze or a graze of a thumbnail against skin as the language between them.

He’s the first to speak. “How much do you believe in this, Yen?”

“In living?” Yennefer looks at him with one eye. 

“In playin’ a fool’s odds for the outside shot of living.” Eskel is calm as he watches their clasped hands, his own thumb grazing her knuckles. “What you’re sayin’... it sounds like suicide.”

“No.” Yennefer tilts their hands to expose her inner wrist. She grazes her fingers across the scars there. The lines are practical, goal-oriented, as she has always been. “ _This_ was suicide. The portal-- it is a real chance. Our _only_ chance. If I have it, I must take it.”

_Why?_

She doesn’t know if Eskel means to project the question. He doesn’t look at her as he thinks it. Instead, he is looking at the grass and his mind swims with images-- the ghosts that once populated this meadow. It occurs to her that he has practiced what seems like a calm acceptance of reality, but perhaps it is something else after all. A readiness-- a too-readiness to face death, a duel that cannot be won. 

“Because there is still life, Eskel,” Yennefer murmurs.

He’s staring at the ground, purposefully avoiding her gaze now.

“I am reading you now.” Yennefer squeezes his hand. He doesn’t reciprocate. “May I tell you what I see?”

Yennefer rests her head against Eskel’s shoulder. “There comes a point,” she says slowly, “when your losses accumulate to such a degree, you cannot imagine existence without them. You become an idea: a man who has lost. A man who grieves. To stop grieving… it feels like suicide. The end of you.”

Eskel flinches. 

“Geralt became that man.” The sound of his name is a shock. She’s avoided saying it since the funeral in the forktail’s cave. “Consumed by sorrow. Defined by his grief. He could not live without Ciri. After I lost him, I nearly followed the same path. And then I came here.” 

Her hand squeeze is quick this time, playful. “Don’t worry, I shan’t degrade us both with tales of _love’s redeeming power_ and _rediscovering the joy in life_. But you have taught me much, Eskel. That I can be more than what I have lost. And a time comes when one step forward at a time isn’t enough. What’s required is a leap.”

Slowly, as if he’s made of stone, Eskel shakes his head. His viper-eyes lift to hers with an effort. He cannot find the words. Yen peers into the formless murk of his emotion and sees the impression lodged there. If she were to put it in words, they’d be: _Do you know how little hope I have left?_

Yennefer lifts her free hand to his cheek. Her thumb follows the too-smooth fault lines of his scars, tracing their crooked path down to his mutilated lip. “We don’t need hope,” she whispers. “We need life.”

They come together, chest to chest, chins on each other’s shoulders. He is thinking that he doesn’t want her to die. She nuzzles into his neck and projects at gods she doesn’t believe in: _preserve this, damn you. Save this._

\- - - -

On the first day after she found the portal in Kaer Morhen, Yennefer piles five books into a corner of the cave. It becomes her study and her sanctuary and she spends the entire day there, except to eat and attend to bodily necessities.

On the third day, the last plant in the northenmost row dies.

On the fifth day, Yennefer finds the dim outlines of a ritual that can supposedly open a portal to another world. They don’t have all of the spell ingredients, but she thinks she can look up reasonable substitutes. 

On the seventh day, Eskel digs a new latrine. The advancing snowline has buried the old one. Outside of the meadow, his Quen now lasts up to six minutes. 

On the eighth day, Yennefer announces that she’s ready.

\- - - -

“And the potions? They’re packed as well?”

“Yes, Yen. Everything we can carry is packed. First thing we do on the other side, we find a mule.”

“I can’t help but feel we’re forgetting something.”

“That’s just worry talkin’. We’re leavin’ this whole world behind. Might make you anxious that we forgot the keys.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Hey. You think they speak the same language in that other world?”

“I doubt it.”

“Heh. Imagine-- a visitor from another world poppin’ into Novigrad outta nowhere, with a bunch of luggage. And no one knows why he’s there, and he can’t tell ‘em.”

“I can read minds. I’m sure that will get us somewhere. If nothing else, you can stand about looking intimidating and belligerent.”

“Sure. They’ll trip over ‘emselves to give us coin and help out the poor refugees. Uh, if they use coin.”

“I’m sure they’ll take notice of your swords. Every world has a need for hired muscle.”

“Sounds great. ‘Cept I won’t understand any of their orders. ‘Kay, you’re pointin’ to that guy over there-- am I supposed to guard ‘im or kill ‘im?”

“Perhaps we could both do with a change in careers. We might land in a world without monsters. Or magic as we know it. What shall it be? Shall we open a tavern?”

“Sure. Make liquor that nobody in that world knows how to make. We’ll call it the Rusty Wolf, make millions.”

“Rusty Wolf? Why not the Greasy Cloud, the Dry Water, or some other nonsensical combination?”

“Thought it was catchy.”

“Hm, hm!”

“Yen.”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“Why, you’re so very welcome, Eskel. For what, exactly?”

“Being here. Finding the portal. Talkin’ me into goin’ to it. Been thinkin’... I’m used to the idea of dyin’. This thing about living… Heh. Maybe living’s harder. If everything works tomorrow, I won’t be on the Path. First time in eighty years. Don’t know what I’ll be, anymore.”

“You’ll find out.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Only that we can’t know what we’ll become until we become it.”

“Heh. Vesemir talked like that when he was drunk. Strange. The old man was older than Kaer Morhen. Who knows how long he might’ve made it.”

“Mm hm. And if you live that long, a hundred years in this world will feel like a blink. A distant childhood memory. Imagine two hundred more years in a world with no Nilfgaard, no Redania. No Brotherhood of Sorcerers, no Lodge. No Kaer Morhen, no contracts, no Path.”

“What’s left?”

“Possibility.”

“Huh. Possibility. Think I like that. Listen, Yen. Tomorrow-- if it doesn’t work-- if there isn’t enough magic left and the portal won’t open...”

“Yes?”

“It’s okay.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I want to. So we know where we stand. It’s better, Yen, you’re right. Better that we kept going. That we worked the contract to the end. Remember?”

“Ah yes. Remind me when we get to the other world-- I owe you payment for your half of the contract.”

“Don’t think we decided payment terms.”

“What payment will you accept, then, witcher?”

“Let’s go with the standard. Give me what you find at home, but don’t expect.”

“I won’t have a home any longer, Eskel. We’re literally crossing to a foreign world.”

“Yeah. You gotta lot of time to get one and then pay me off.”

“Ha! And they say witchers are cold-hearted.”

“Yeah, well, don’t spread it around. We’ve got a reputation to keep… after we tell our new friends what a witcher is.”

“You are a truly ludicrous man.”

“Thanks. And you’re a beautiful woman... and clever, and tough as hell.”

“Eskel?”

“Mm-hm?”

“Do you love me?”

“...Eskel…”

“It’s alright, Eskel. You don’t have to speak.”

“Gods damn it. Yen. Yennefer.”

“I can hear you, Eskel. Inside. Sh. It’s enough.”

“It’s not enough, Yen. We didn’t have any time.”

“We will fight for it, tomorrow… and afterwards, perhaps we will have more. Much more.”

“I want more. More time for us, for you. Do you know what I’d want for you?”

“No. Would you like to show me?… ahhh! That is how I dreamed myself, when I studied at Aretuza. How did you know? To be strong and free, unbridled as a wild mare. Powerful in spirit and skill, admired and feared. Some witchers dream of homes, but you envision me roaming free. Unfettered. You wandering soul. The Path was freedom to you, wasn’t it? A peace truer than stillness. And where are you in this picture, Eskel?”

“Wherever you want me to be.”

“Then dream yourself there. Beside me.”

“Like this?”

“...not quite what I imagined. Why are you carrying a lute, exactly? Have you even touched a lute before?”

“No. But maybe they’ve never seen one, either. You said you wanted some witcher poetry, right?”

“Gods. I don’t know why I continue to tolerate you and your nonsense.”

“Must be my cookin’. Boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes…”

“Aaaand thus I feel myself overwhelmed by a sudden and overpowering wave of exhaustion. We should rest, really. We’ll need our strength tomorrow.”

“Hmph. Don’t wanna stop lookin’ at you.”

“Well then. A compromise? Tell me a bedtime story. Perhaps that’ll lull us to sleep… and tame the dreams. What was your suggestion? Kittens and unicorns?”

“Hm. Happy stories aren’t exactly my specialty. How about-- a’right, I got it. This is the story of… Catfish the kitten and… Muscle the unicorn.”

“ _Muscle_ the _unicorn_?”

“Sh. Lemme tell the story. A’right, so, one day Catfish and Muscle set off to find the legendary… uh... ”

“Spring of Life?”

“Hey. No more interruptin’. So yeah, Catfish and Muscle set off to find the legendary Spring of Life. Local folk say it grants eternal youth, but it’s guarded by dragons, cliffs, old women with riddles-- you know, the usual…”

\- - - -

She dreams of Sodden.

They’re dying. Everyone around her, allies and enemies alike, human and horse and magical constructs that go to their ends with unearthly screams. A crow calls her from somewhere above her head, and beyond that, Tissaia.

_Yennefer. Do not stop._

_I’m trying!_

_You must do more than try._

Yennefer plunges into the abyss that surrounds her, the blackened world of blood and ash. Her heart pulls her forward and demands that another stumbling step follow the one before it. She can’t stop. Even if they can’t win the battle, she cannot stop.

Tissaia’s voice laughs softly in her mind. _You are more than I could have made you, Yennefer. Go._

There’s warmth like an embrace, and then the flagstones thud beneath her boots. Her lungs clear in the cold mountain air. 

“Yen!”

His voice doesn’t come from the right place. Yennefer turns blindly, plunging through the treacherous air. “Where are you?”

“Come on!” 

A presence behind her pounds against the stones with the weight of inevitability. Now Eskel’s arm finds her, pulls her against him. He’s unbroken, moving rapidly.

“You didn’t fight him,” Yen says. 

“No.” His voice rumbles against her. “I get it now. Come on, move. Can you read me?”

Yen does. Eskel shows her what he sees. They’re facing the other side of the courtyard as they shuffle across the moss-grown stones toward a portal unlike any she has seen. It is not the elegant blue swirl of a path connecting two points on the same plane. It’s an ugly, raw gash in being. Something vicious has hacked through the threads of reality and forced itself through. He/ She can see only a few feet to the other side. Like a torrential river, the surface ripples too chaotically to see beyond.

“We headed for that?”

She hesitates. The portal is a ragged wound in space, a violent entry from one world to the next. But isn’t it always? The death of the farmgirl with slit wrists and her resurrection as Yennefer the sorceress-- the screaming dissolution of a little boy in the Trials and his metamorphosis into a witcher prepared to fight Death itself-- what birth or rebirth comes without blood?

“Yes,” Yen says.

They run toward the portal. As they near it, she swears there’s a shape to its roaring winds, a rippling in the air like a voice speaking--

Yennefer and Eskel awaken in their cave. He’s breathing normally. She can see. Their awakening is gentle and clear-headed, and they look at each other.

“That it?” Eskel says. 

“Yes,” Yen says. 

“Does that mean we die?”

“It is always a death-- the loss of one world and the entry to another.” She lays her palm against his chest. “But death can lead also to new life. It is the only thing that can.”

\- - - -

Yennefer casts her eyes over the meadow. Some base lugubrious urge wants her to count everything she can see-- the number of potato plants still alive, the number of trunks she’s leaving behind, the logs they never burned. Sentimental nonsense, but she forgives it within herself. Months ago, the meadow had felt like a prison as much as a sanctuary. But they had survived here, and she is grateful to whatever long-ago mage had created this space so that the witchers of Kaer Morhen would never run out of hellebore. 

Her gaze returns to Eskel. He is on his knees still, eyes open but unfocused. Meditating as per his morning ritual. She could kiss him or laugh at him. Even today, the world’s last witcher has not abandoned his routine. It’s a shame Tissaia and Vesemir never had occasion to meet. Yennefer’s and Eskel’s teachers would have found far too much in common.

He lifts his head, and the viper eyes sharpen. “I’m ready.”

“Are you sure? We’ve time to fit in another chapter of _Ghouls and Alghouls_ , if you’d like.”

“Eh, already memorized it.” It’s hard to tell if he’s joking. “All packed up?”

“Yes.” 

Eskel looks around the meadow. “Hm. Shame about the longrube. Had a hard time makin’ that take.”

“I packed the ripe ones.”

“Hey, smart. Snack for the road. Portal. Whatever.”

“Hhm. If only that were our problem-- feeling peckish.” Yennefer takes a deep breath. “I’ll prepare the blade, then.”

It doesn’t take long-- only a few minutes to coat the blade of the modest dagger in the oil that Eskel helped her brew last night, a few more to chant the formula that makes the blade glow and then crackle, like caged lightning spitting to be free. They are leaving the safety of the meadow that has preserved them for months, to enter the killing cold outside. Every moment in warmth counts. 

Yennefer slides the dagger into a sheath at her hip. Then they regard each other, each of them layering thick furs on top of their traveling clothes. Eskel is wearing his armor, though it fits a little loosely on the shoulders. He’s had to arrange his satchel and sheaths carefully to ensure that both of them are accessible and won’t entangle him. Some sort of potion has taken effect on him, she doesn’t know which one, but he’s grown pale and his veins have darkened.

“Couple a vagabonds,” Eskel says with a firm nod. “We’ll make lots of friends on the other side.”

“But of course. We’re irresistibly charming.” Yen smiles. “Shall we?”

“Go ahead.”

She doesn’t know why she expected Eskel to turn toward the meadow and bid it farewell, or indulge in some ritual to cut ties forever. He’s watching her, taking her lead. Time has been a singular line culminating in this point, the future unknowable. Now it’s collapsed. There is no moment but now, no way but forward. 

Yennefer raises her hand. Chaos churns at her command, and the portal opens before them. The easy one. Eskel puts a hand on her shoulder and casts the sign of Quen. Without words, they walk through the portal together---

\--into a maelstrom of blinding whiteness. Yennefer nearly falls backward. The snow underfoot has hardened into sheer ice, and they stumble while trying simply to stand upright. Eskel unsheathes his steel sword in a fluid flash that he has never stopped practicing and plunges the blade halfway into the ice. He leans his weight on the hilt and grabs Yennefer’s shoulder with his other hand. 

With his help, she finds her footing. Gods. The raven hadn’t felt the power of this storm, but she does now. A devouring wind roars through the courtyard of Kaer Morhen, through the many gaps in the ice-covered walls. The stones long ago vanished beneath the snow. She’s seen this many times in the megascope, buildings and towers ravaged by the snow. The old witcher’s keep is nearly unrecognizable, and she feels Eskel’s shock vibrate the air. 

“Hold the sign!” Yen needs to yell. The wind roars around them. 

“Sure!” Eskel shouts. His grip on her shoulder is almost painfully tight.

Yen draws the dagger from its sheath. The words that she has spent the last several days studying day and night come to her lips. They’re vicious, brutal words, the syllables edged to cut because that is what they are here to do, cut a wound so deep that it will severe the threads of their reality and allow them to pass through to another. The oiled blade of the dagger glows red and then blue, joining the shimmering gold of Eskel’s Quen shield. They stand impossibly small and pitiful against the colossal force of the blizzard howling around them. 

_Hurry._ Even Eskel’s projection sounds strained. 

“Alathar! Kav il takir!” Yen shouts, and she plunges the dagger through air and space.

The world does not split open. 

“Alathar! Kav il takir!” Yennefer summons chaos and stabs again, but that rot in the seams, she can almost taste it now with her waking senses. Magic hangs in rotted threads and she is trying to pull the decay together into a braid strong enough to carry them. It cannot hold.

“What’s happening?” Eskel shouts. 

Not this. This cannot happen. 

“It’s not opening!” Yennefer shouts. The winter wind seems to circle them, lashing the Quen shield with sheets of ice. It’s waited and watched so long at the threshold of their tiny guarded meadow. Now they’ve left their protection behind, and it will consume them. She tries to shout it down. “I need more magic!”

“How?”

She doesn’t know. If there were any magic artifacts in Kaer Morhen, she might draw from them, empty them somehow. Anything that can hold a magical charge--

Yennefer grabs the obsidian star around her neck in a fist. The charge held there heats up like a flame in her palm, heating, bursting, and it shatters in her grip. Obsidian shards slice into her fingers as the magic breaks free but does not escape because she catches it on the blade of her dagger. It glows and she plunges it into the air, _there_ , a dent is made in matter, but it doesn’t break through.

“More! Your medallion!” she yells. 

“My--” 

Her bloodied hand goes to his throat, finds the silver wolf’s head. It isn’t much. Blood already mats the black velvet of her gloves but then the medallion shatters in her hand and bright red sprays across the ice, over Eskel’s armor and furs. Yennefer knows that she’s hurt, the pain is a distant clangor, but she can’t stop now. Even if she has no strength she must fight without strength, and she catches the magic on her blade and _pushes_ through space and something gives way. An angry spark spits mid-air. But that is all.

“No!” Yennefer screams and once upon a time it would have been enough to rip whole mansions down to their foundations, wither miles of forests in a single life-devouring blast. But she reaches for the chaos that she has commanded nearly all her life and it does not answer. It abandons them to die.

“Yen--”

Her eyes sting with tears. This is their only chance. She can’t fail, but she isn’t enough. A cold worse than the wind numbs her. Despair.

“Yen!” Eskel can’t rise to his full height, he needs to hang onto the sword to keep them both standing, but he leans toward her. “Use me!”

“What?”

“You say I emanate. That’s magic, yeah? Use it!” 

Yennefer turns to look at him. His yellow viper eyes are ready to meet hers, and she is going to project _no, that will drain you, I don’t know what that will do to you or if you’ll survive_ and he would think back _I don’t care, I want you to do this_ and she would, and she will, because what passes between them moves too quickly to be a mage’s mind-reading-- it is simply that she knows him and he knows her, and they know she has to do this. 

Yennefer presses her mangled hand against his scarred cheek, as she has so many times before. There it is, that sweet crackling emanation. She cradles it, and then she _pulls_. The viper pupils round out, go wide, and gods she was right, there has been lightning in his veins all along. It leaps through her, from her hand to her chest to the dagger, and the blade glows blue-white like the stars that even the White Frost cannot destroy, and he is in her is in the dagger, plunging through the rotted seams of their plane into vital living essence beyond, and the air splits open.

A sudden blast of cold strikes her. Yennefer falls to her knees on the blood-spattered ice. Eskel’s collapsed on his side, his Quen shield broken. 

The ice, Eskel’s face gone pale, the blood on the snow, all of it is painted red and orange by the seething portal that’s opened in the air. It doesn’t look anything like the blue-tinted portal that took them here from the meadow. It’s an open, living wound, shuddering with life from another world. Their way out. Their last chance.

“Eskel.” Yennefer shoves his prone form. He’s too limp, rolling instead of resisting, eyes closed. “Eskel! The portal is open! We must go before it shuts!”

She tries to summon her own shield but there’s nothing, not even a glimmer of chaos that answers. They’re defenseless against the all-numbing cold. Eskel rolls his head against his arm but she needs him moving, she cannot do this again, she cannot kneel beside the body of a dying witcher and reach for a life that’s fading--

“Eskel! Please!” It’s a sob. 

Eskel’s eyes open. He’s moaning something and Yennefer tries to read him but there’s not even enough magic left to make that tiny leap to the mind she’s learned so deeply. 

“There’s no time. Come. Come!” She grabs him under the shoulders. The frost has already encased his steel blade. They abandon it to the ice. By some miracle of fate or his own will, Eskel crawls toward the portal. 

Red light dances around the portal’s edges like a wound trying to heal. They are near it now. It feels like warmth, the heartbeat of a living world leaking into their own. Eskel, open-mouthed, pale as the dead, stares at the portal through half-lidded eyes. 

Yennefer doesn’t know if this portal will truly take them to the city of doors. She doesn’t know if it’s stable, if they will arrive in one piece, if they will arrive together or separated by thousands of miles. 

She knows that she is Yennefer who did not drink hemlock and that she wants the man in her arms to take another breath, to open his viper-eyes in a new world. A world where they will have more time. 

They came this far step by step. Now, the leap.

“Hold onto me,” Yennefer whispers. She wraps her arms around Eskel, who no longer emanates at all. The portal rumbles as if hungry for their entry, and they tumble through it together. 

Seconds later, the portal hisses. The angry band of light draws itself together tighter and tighter until the wound in reality heals itself. 

The courtyard of Kaer Morhen lies empty, abandoned for the last time. Only these remain: the roaring of wind and snow, the faint traces of red splatter in the ice, and a witcher’s steel sword planted upright as a grave.

\- - - -

_“And? What happened next?”_

_Eskel rolled his head to look at Yennefer. “You know what happened next. Catfish and Muscle drank from the Spring of Life and lived happily ever after, and all that.”_

_“Is that all?” Yennefer’s violet eyes sparkled._

_“Whattaya want, details of their real estate? A’right, Catfish got himself a ten-acre farm in Touissant that grows nothing but catnip…”_

_“Insufferable man.” Yennefer propped her head up in one of her palms and traced the fingernails of her other hand through the hair on his chest. “If it were possible for you to spend a singular moment of your existence pondering the wisdom of a powerful sorceress…”_

_Eskel grinned. “Okay. A singular moment. Go.”_

_“I heard another version of the story.” Yennefer tossed her head, flinging her raven locks so she could look at him without her hair getting in the way. “I’m given to understand that no such spring existed. Their victory was instead the journey, and the heart to take it.”_

_“Hm.” Eskel traced the inside of her forearm with a fingertip. “And Lambert said I was a bad storyteller.”_

_“What! Is that not more meaningful?” Yennefer half-rose, bending upright like a leopard. “To find true connection after a lifetime of-- ridicule, exile, self-imposed and otherwise, doubt? To choose life when they had every reason to choose despair-- is that not everything?”_

_Eskel gazed up at her with his head propped in his palm. He liked seeing her from this angle, her dark hair half-shrouding her as if she were about to tell him a secret. “Yeah, try winnin’ over a tavern audience with that. Folk like happy endings.”_

_Yennefer scoffed. She shifted her weight as if to lie down next to him again, but she paused mid-motion. Instead, she dropped a suspicious gaze to his face. “Really, Eskel?”_

_“What? What did I say?”_

_“It’s not what you said. It’s what you thought.” She wagged a finger at him._

_“But I didn’t even say it!”_

_“Yet you wanted to. Badly. Go on, say it aloud, so I might thrash you properly.”_

_Eskel heaved a long-suffering sigh but he couldn’t suppress the grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. Even without mind-reading, he had a feeling he knew where this was going. “A’right, fine._ Speaking of happy endings…"

_Yennefer twisted her hips, throwing her leg over his thighs so that she straddled him. “Tsk, tsk,” she purred, “is there no end to your rampant vulgarity?”_

_“Mmm. Let’s test it and find out.”_

_Yennefer leaned forward, placing her hands on either side of his head and holding herself above the lean, scarred body, the viper eyes that shone up at her in the dark. He liked the way her black hair draped over him, the ends just tickling his bare chest. She could hear him liking it._

_“Hmm,” she thrummed, “yes. But I must tell you something first.”_

_“Ooh. A secret?”_

_“Yes. Promise you’ll tell no one.”_

_“Not a single living soul,” Eskel said innocently._

_Yennefer dropped her head, letting her black hair fall around his face in a curtain that screened them from all else. He wanted to kiss her; she could see those cat eyes flicking to her mouth. So she tilted her head, brought her mouth close to his ear instead._

_“I heard you before,” Yennefer whispered. “And I love you, too.”_

_She pressed her lips to his neck and if Eskel had emanated before, now he shone._

_They moved together, the witcher and the sorceress, calling to each other in a language their bodies spoke, exploring and then searching, seeking and then finding, entering and then opening to that place that was the center of life and warmth, that no winter could touch._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hoo boy. We made it!
> 
> If you've made it to the end, I wanna tell you how this fic came about. I mentor young people, and part of that is helping them figure out their post-high school plans. One of the folks I work with struggled to articulate any kind of life plan. We had to write something, so eventually, the kiddo put a plan in writing. Their plan began: _When society collapses because of climate change..._
> 
> Overstatement, maybe. But I have been thinking for a while about what it means to prepare younger people for a future that may not exist, and reading that was a punch to the gut. I fell into a bleak mood, came home, and wrote the first chapter of this fic in a couple fevered hours. 
> 
> The original plan for the fic was quite different. It was going to be two chapters long and absolutely bleak. But a funny thing happened while I was writing it. Some... instinct in me pushed back. Despair is not the story we need right now. I didn't know what other story _could_ be told, but by following Eskel and Yennefer through their own journey, I found one that works for me. I hope it helped you, too.
> 
> Thanks for reading this and coming along on the journey. Extra special thanks to asfroste for all of your support and encouragement in my return to fanfic after-- well, after a long damned time!
> 
> =====================================
> 
> This story has now been translated into Russian! [Read it on Ficbook here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/10372048/). Many thanks to Liadan Foley for their hard work <3


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